


Carry On

by angel1876



Series: Carry On [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alcohol, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Platonic Cuddling, Terminal Illnesses, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-06-13 21:01:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 34
Words: 35,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15373224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel1876/pseuds/angel1876
Summary: A collection of moments with my OCs during the zombie outbreak.Tw: for violence and illness.





	1. Prologue

Jasper was just happy that his big sister was still alive.

Five years, five entire years of not knowing one way or the other. Although outside help and the process of recovery came to pass just a couple of years into the ordeal, the fact remained that the survivors were scattered all over the place, the phone lines were down, almost no one had a chance to keep their social security with them and none of those numbers were attached to a file, anyway. All of the information linked to those numbers was kept in databases that long since failed due to lack of upkeep, so the act of finding a specific person in this chaos was near impossible at best.

For a long time, the focus had been on merely survival. Spreading the vaccine around, helping those who were hurt, weeding out those who were infected either through time or through other means. There were still a few of them- the people in charge liked to call them carriers, but let's be honest, they were zombies- there were still a few of them about, but they were much smaller in number than before, and it wasn't going to be long before they died out completely.

Now, after everything, the country could rebuild again. Or at least it could start to.

If she hadn't been a doctor, and therefore both important to the process, not to mention damn good at her job, he wouldn't have found her. Rachel's name was well known where she was, and it was hearsay and rumor that finally got word back to him. Somehow, she'd managed to get all the way to the other side of the states, and had been stationed at a hospital there for almost two years.

Needless to say, Jasper insisted on getting transportation there, and thankfully his friends agreed.

Worry clawed at him, a nervous hope for relief that he knew wasn't rational. A part of him thought that, perhaps, if he saw her again things might return to normal, a lingering flash of what things were before the last time he saw her. He pushed that part of him down as best he could, telling himself that things had changed. Even without the outbreak to contend with, even without the horror of people eating each other and overwhelming the populous, five years was still a long time.

As if to contrast this outlook, the moment her eyes met his, he felt a rush of familiarity. Painful, bittersweet nostalgia, and he'd been so worried about her having changed that he'd overshot his mark and started imagining that the person he came to meet might not even be his sister at all.

But no. He knew that look, that calm level headed gaze, squared shoulders, eyes sweeping him up and down in a quick and silent search for something wrong. An automatic response, checking to see if he was wounded and more than ready to act if he was.

"Jasper."

Just his name, she put her file down and came forward, arms spreading for a hug before she'd even reached him. Heat building in his eyes, the threat of tears, Jasper closed the distance and hugged her back.

For several moments, neither sibling was willing to part.

As if bringing his thoughts to life, she said, "They told me you were coming. I wasn't sure if it was really going to be you."

"Yeah...we're the only two left, aren't we?"

"...unfortunately, yes. I do believe we are. But perhaps the future will surprise us."

It was still Rachel. Ever the professional, but she felt more than she let on. She felt the need to be strong for others, be their rock, and she had a bad habit of neglecting her own self. He squeezed tighter, knowing that she probably needed it, before he let go and stepped back.

She looked the same as she had before, albeit more tired. When she folded her arms over her chest, he caught the light of something shinny.

A cross, hanging about her neck from a chain.

He didn't ask about it. Even if her beliefs were any of his business, now would not be the time to ask about them. It was just a little oddity, and given everything that happened, a lot of people who weren't otherwise interested might turn to find comfort in faith.

(He was lying to himself if he said he really believed that of Rachel, but one never knew.)

"If you wait for me to finish up my rounds, I'll take you to lunch. We can catch up on things."

He nodded without hesitation, and so it was, a family reunited after a calamity.

The two of them, they never left the area. She remained stationed at the hospital, and he stayed with her. Separate houses, he couldn't bear to be away from the friends he'd survived a round of hell with, but they saw each other at least once a day.

Months went by, time marching on, and he soon commented, the indirect question hanging in the air.

"You know, I was a bit surprised to see you wearing that, when we found each other."

"...I'd rather not talk about it."

Just that, and no more. Without missing a beat, she changed the subject, and he wasn't going to press her.

It was ten years after their reunion, fifteen years after the outbreak, that he got an answer. She knocked on his door and came in without a word, two copies of the same book in her hands. Handing one to him, she went to the couch and sat down to open hers.

Looking at the cover, he saw a single floating feather, the title "Carry On," and the author's name.

Dr. Rachel Evans.

"I didn't know you were publishing a book..."

He got the message when she didn't respond. Grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge, he went into the livingroom and sat down on a recliner on the opposite end of the room. Looks like it was time to read what his big sister wrote.


	2. Burning Bridges

They were alone.

Safety in numbers, but they were alone.

Humans, as a species, evolved to help one another out. That's how and why they managed to get to the top of the foodchain, not because they're especially fast or strong, but because they're innovative and good at problem solving and very, very good at teamwork. They survived because when one or two, or even a small group of them happened to find themselves in trouble, then the entire nearby population would come to their aid. It's similar to how ants can take down animals a thousand times bigger than themselves, even the top apex predators don't stand a chance against a sea of relentless pointy sticks.

So the fact that they were two mere humans, alone and surrounded by those that would do them harm, it felt like a death sentence. Leaving the group was perhaps the worst thing they could have done. If they were attacked, no one would come.

Yet, despite this, Rachel walked on.

Eyes trained forward, down the empty street, listening for noise that might be covered up by their footsteps. Somewhere, she realized that maybe she was gripping too hard, perhaps shouldn't be gripping at all, and so made it a point to let go and put some distance between them. The fact that Danielle flexed and rolled her wrist afterward was telling.

"...sorry."

"No, it's okay."

The air was stiff, a physical thing. Uncomfortable. Their own voices felt like an echo through a funnel, distant and quiet. For a time, neither of them said anything else. Rachel went over the map in her mind's eye, glanced up toward the sun to try and reassure herself that she was leading them the right way. On foot, even the closest hospital would take weeks to get to, and the last thing they needed to do was spend even a day heading in the wrong direction. Around them cars were parked, abandoned by owners that couldn't get to them either through death or through physically being unable to get there. They stood all around, mocking the two and their combined lack of hot-wiring skills.

Rachel eyed Danielle from the side, trying to gauge whether or not she'd managed to cause a bruise, mentally noting that she should keep an eye out for aspirin if that were the case. It was stupid, dragging her away like that, and she should know better.

Danielle glanced up at her, and she looked away, avoiding that questioning gaze. She knew it was coming before the younger woman even opened her mouth, "...we can still go back, you know."

"No, we can't." Rachel's answer was firm. "They're going to focus on their needs, and we need to focus on our own."

"Maybe it'll be okay. You said yourself it was just a precaution. Just to be safe, right?"

"There's a reason we take precautions. As your doctor, I have to insist."

That seemed to be the end of it. The silence returned, and when Rachel looked down, she found Danielle was the one looking away.

Exhaling through her nose, Rachel reached up and brushed her fingers through the ponytail resting neatly over her right shoulder. They needed to do this. They could survive this. And most important of all, it was her responsibility to do this. Danielle hadn't been her only patient, but she was the only one to make it out with her.

Feeling as if she should say something else, Rachel said, "It's not your fault. Don't blame yourself."

"...they were really upset."

"They were scared. Sometimes that makes people angry. Don't take it personally, because it's not."

"What's going to happen to us out here, Dr. Evans?"

"The same thing that would have happened if we stayed with them. We're going to survive until help comes. That's all we can do."

They'd just keep walking. Get food and supplies as needed. Avoid any and all of the infected. (Danielle wanted to call them zombies. Rachel refused to call them such.) They should also each get a gun, for emergencies. The group had a handful of them, but given the less than positive note they'd left on neither of them had one.

If they had half a chance, Rachel decided, they'd stop by a police station and see if they'd get lucky.

A hand curled into the sleeve of her coat, though the moment she looked Danielle pulled away.

Professional space. The rules of the job dictated that there be a wall between them. Compassion and sympathy were one thing, but there had to be a line drawn somewhere. At the same time, this had been a difficult few weeks, and considering what'd happened before they'd fled the hospital...

They'd need to talk about it at some point. Danielle would need to talk about it. No one could go through that and not suffer some form of consequence.

Rachel wouldn't press it now. Right now, they needed to act. Mourning could come later, when their own survival was assured. Still, she knew that her patient needed emotional care, and she couldn't ignore that. Stepping close again, she offered her arm, and felt the other's own wrap tight around it.

They walked down the street. Together, but still on their own.


	3. Chatter

Danielle was extroverted.

Rachel, by contrast, was an introvert by nature.

It was something that she'd known from day one, way back when they first met and Danielle told her in detail how she'd been roughhousing with her dorm-mate and wound up hitting her head bad enough to fracture her skull, requiring a trip to the emergency room. Rachel knew what brought her to her department already, but she'd heard it from the doctors and the nurses that reported it to her, a third-person and very clinical perspective. She'd not had the experience painted for her in a play-by-play fashion until her patient shared it with her.

There was knowing something as a fact, and then there was knowing the emotions behind it, the rush of one event to the other. Danielle told it like she was telling a story, she focused on what she thought and felt, what her parents did, what the doctors said.

They said it was a miracle, and it was. Caught before even a single symptom showed, so the treatment would be simple and easy. It was the sort of case Rachel lived for.

The first day after the outbreak of infected wasn't anything like what was to come. In the short time they were with the group, Rachel had continued to bear the responsibility expected of a doctor while not necessarily acting as Danielle's only source of social activity and support. There were a full twenty people around for her to talk with, a couple even young enough that they were around the same age.

With just the two of them now, Rachel was the only one Danielle had, and while the first few days of their isolation passed in silence, that ended come the end of the week. Danielle started talking just after they'd set off. It had been hours, and she was still talking.

Which wasn't a bad thing, don't get her wrong, she didn't mind the chatter. It was almost impressive, how she'd been going on for so long and yet she'd not ran out of things to say. She talked about her art, friends in college, hobbies, that time she made a potato explode in the microwave by accident. It was a little tiring, but she could handle it. What bothered her was that she didn't entirely know what to say back. She tried to think of something mundane to fill the silence and show that she was willing to converse, but she kept coming up blank. The thing that they should be talking about wasn't a subject Rachel was willing to bring up just yet, and she couldn't seem to find anything else.

Danielle was the one to broach it first, inadvertent, an accident.

"I love animals, though. I used to draw dogs all the time. Dad always wanted to get one, and we..."

And there it was. A pause. She faltered. Rachel felt a chill run down her back as she saw Danielle's eyes lose focus. Just for a moment.

"...dad always wanted to get one, but mom doesn't like the fur everywhere. So I told him, after I get my own place, I'd get a dog and then he could come over and play with it whenever he wanted."

A hollow ring to the air.

Rachel took a deep breath, "You can tell me about it, if you need to, you know."

"...I'm okay."

"You've not been sleeping well. I know you're having nightmares."

The offer hung there, between them, caught in the space where Rachel's arm ended and Danielle's began. For a moment, the only sound was footsteps.

Danielle said, "You would think being nice was the right thing to do. I told them it was okay to go get something to eat, I didn't need them there with me. If I'd made them stay, they would have been with us, and they'd still be with us. I mean, we'd all slept in, so it was a rush getting out of there. They hadn't had a chance to get breakfast, and you and I weren't doing anything new, and...I was just trying to be nice. You know?"

"It's not your fault."

"I know that. I know. It's no one's fault but...I wish I'd asked them to stay."

Rachel squeezed her arm, and received a squeeze in kind.

"...do you like animals, Dr. Evans?"

They weren't lingering on the subject, and Rachel wondered if part of this onslaught of speech was a method of coping, and not just an affinity for small-talk.

But it gave her something specific to talk about.

"I do. I was going to be a veterinarian, before I focused on human care."

"What made you change your mind?"

"I don't know what did it exactly. I suppose the more I researched the medical career, the more I was inclined to narrow my focus down. I thought I could help those who needed it, and so I followed what my instincts told me. Besides, I developed a habit of taking care of my family when they were sick, so the shift was natural. What made you decide to go to art school?"

"I've always been good at drawing, so I wanted to get better at it. And I like all the different ways you can reach people with an image and some words. I want to make comics."

"What kind?"

"All kinds. Maybe action to start out with, but I don't want to get stuck in a single genre. I wanna do a little bit of everything."

"I'm sure you will, after this is over."

"Wanna know some ideas I have?"

And so the talking continued, well into the night, and then it resumed in the morning after they set out once more.

Three more days into it, and restless chatter was the new norm.

"...Danielle?"

"Yes, Dr. Evans?"

"Given the circumstances, you can call me Rachel, if you'd like."

Because though she worked hard for her PHD, at least people dropped the 'doctor' in her off hours. No one called her by that title twenty-four seven.

"Okay...Rachel."


	4. Cross

Danielle had a habit of going through all the things in the houses they stayed in.

In part it was for supplies. There was no denying the practical application of trying to find something, anything, that might be of use. But she didn't focus on just the things she might need. There were trinkets to consider, family pictures, decaying plants. A hundred little things to remind herself that the people they were stealing from, dead or alive, were once happy families that lived in the houses she and Rachel borrowed.

It wasn't a happy practice, though she tried to make it less morbid as time went on. She liked to imagine what they were like, these people. That happy lady holding the cat, the laughing guy who obviously had no idea someone was taking a picture of him. What did they care about? What did they spend their time doing when they weren't working? What jobs did they have?

Who were their friends? Were they the kind of people to mingle with the neighborhood, or were they more secluded? Did they bring pie to the new people, or did they not acknowledge their existence at all?

It was during one of these absent runs that she found it. Though they were supposed to be at rest, Danielle was never one to sit still. She leafed through the empty building while Rachel took a nap on the couch.

And there it was, inside a jewelry cabinet.

It was a cross.

If she had to guess, it was a cheap one. Gold plated, not real gold, but one never knew. It hung on a simple chain, thin, one of the ones that would snap if it was tugged hard enough. Oh, it brought back memories.

Danielle sat down against the wall to admire it, twirling the little symbol between her fingers. That was a long time ago, wasn't it? Her high school years felt so distant, crowds of people and full of constant activity. Now the only time there was activity was when there were people that wanted to eat her coming. They said that high school was more simple than anything in the adult world, and once upon a time she'd be telling those people that they were full of shit, but...given the huge invasion of zombies, she had to agree. Things were simpler back then.

And things were damn complicated to begin with, so that was saying something.

Holding the chain up, letting the cross dangle, she let it sway in the air. The gold caught the light, made it look all shinny. Some crosses came with little diamonds, or sometimes a really tiny statue of Jesus, but this one was just a cross with nothing to mar the smooth surface. Dropping it into her hand, she brushed a finger up and down the spine, just to feel it.

She wondered where her friends were, if they'd managed to avoid the worst of all this. In college, she'd become a part of a new clique, and she'd lost contact with those she'd known in the past.

She snorted air through her nose. What of her enemies, for that matter? Wonder where they were?

Where Lydia was.

Names and faces that she'd not thought about in a couple of years. Maybe they'd still be around. Maybe they were hiding in groups that wandered off on their own. She wished them well, hoped they were faring better than others had.

Without really thinking the decision through, she put the chain around her neck, let the cross settle down at the center of her chest.

Look at her. Wonder what her high school friends would think. Wonder what her parents would have thought.

Danielle doesn't take it off, she's still wearing it when her growing exhaustion pushes down at her fear of sleep until she, too, finds a few hours of rest.

After Rachel complained that she'd only meant to nap for an hour, not sleep the entire night, and the consequential rebuttal from Danielle that Rachel needed sleep just as much as anyone else did, she asked her about it.

And Danielle told her, "I grew up in a religious town. Mom's job transferred her into it before I was born, and we wound up living there for the better part of my life. Mom and dad were still living there, strictly speaking. I moved out to go to college, and when I was going to the hospital to see you, they flew out to keep me company. None of us were religious, but I wound up hearing about it all the time. What about you?"

"I'm not religious, but I took mythology courses in high school as an elective."

Danielle knew Rachel well enough by now to know that she only really spoke when there was something to say. If she wanted her to engage, then she needed to ask questions. So she leaned against her shoulder and asked, "Tell me about those courses?"

And as they got their bearings, ate, and finally headed out for the day, Rachel told her all about them.


	5. Random Conversations: Part One

"...how in the world did you manage to get Catholics to wear pentagrams?"

"They were my friends! And I only made friends with the really cool ones that hated being harassed as much as I did." Danielle turned around, reversing her walk without so much as breaking stride. Hands gripping onto the straps of her backpack, she walked backwards, facing Rachel as they went. "We had to hide them from the teachers though, and not in our pockets. So we found little hiding places in the school to tuck them away. You should have seen her, trying to report us and then the teachers couldn't find anything. I still got in trouble for the choker, but hey, it's a win regardless I'd say. And the choker wasn't that bad, they told me not to wear it like twenty times, but they never did anything. It was more of a take-it-off-now-and-put-it-back-on-once-they-look-away kind of thing, you know?"

Rachel gave a hum of agreement, and Danielle took the signal for what it was.

Turning, she went back to a normal pace at Rachel's side, continuing with her story. "So after about three days, Lydia confronts us directly. It was this big dramatic scene, 'round lunchtime, and I was the bad guy. She accuses me of corrupting my friends, and goes on this speech, trying to save them from me. Tells my boyfriend that I was tempting him to the dark side, like now I'm suddenly Darth Vader. He made that joke, not me. Anyway, she goes on this speech...about sheep and goats."

"Let me guess, sheep are good because they're obedient and goats are bad because they're defiant."

"Yeah!"

"I remember that chapter. That's why a lot of the time, when you see a pentagram in movies, it's got a goat woven into it. Depictions of the devil often take on a goat-like appearance, too, because people took the metaphor too far."

"Yeah! Yes, so, she goes on this big long speech about them, and she got really into it! Then at the end of it, Elise and Andrew were like, 'oh, well, when you put it that way, maybe we should take these off then...oh no! They're stuck! Her power is too great! Ahhh! She's taken over us with her goat powers! Quick, someone distract her with a tin can!' She was so angry. The best part though, it came the next day."

"Oh no."

"Oh yes. See, before class began, I went and snuck into the classroom, and I left a little goat plush on her desk. She takes it to the teacher, and the teacher's like, 'What a cute stuffed animal!' Then she, honest, she throws the goat at me. So you know she knew. And the teacher told her off for throwing it and for disrupting the class."

"Did she leave you alone after that?"

"Nah. This is Lydia, remember? She kept trying to bully me right up until we graduated. If she'd backed off I would have left her be, I don't go around starting shit with people."

"You never struck me as the type...ah, Danielle?"

"Mmm?"

"Your sunscreen's getting a bit thin. I want you to apply a fresh coat."

"Sure! Hold on."

Danielle fell quiet as she fished around in a side pocket and pulled the tube out. The sun was getting a bit harsh, and she'd sweated a lot of what she'd put on earlier off. When she was done, she offered some to Rachel, who also applied a fresh coat.

"So," Danielle said, "What about you? What was high-school like for you?"

"I had a calmer time of things, I can tell you that right now. I was never so much of a trouble maker, kept my head down and did everything I needed to do. My girlfriend was the more exciting one, more into the cliques and social gatherings. It got exhausting after a while, but it was good for her."

"What was she like?"

"She was nice. Trusting, kind. It was a good relationship while it lasted." Rachel paused in thought. "We were together up until a few months before graduation. She had her own career she wanted to pursue, and I had mine. We were going to two different colleges, in two different states, and we decided that the long distance wasn't going to work with us. Besides, the medical field requires dedication, most of my free time went into studying, and I do believe she wanted more from me than a quiet companion that might get a chance to sleep next to her maybe twice a week. We broke up under good circumstances, but we didn't keep in contact."

"Ahh...at least you broke up. I don't think I ever actually broke things off with Andrew."

"No?"

"I was so ready to get out of there, like...I was applying for colleges in other states a good year before I graduated. The moment I got my chance to get my own dorm, I jumped for it. Andrew and I said we'd keep in touch, and for about two weeks we did, but then we never spoke again. It happens like that sometimes."

Danielle put the sunscreen back in the pack.

Rachel said, "It does. Sometimes, even if the relationship isn't something you regret, that doesn't mean it's immune from running its course."

"Yeah. I suppose this also means we're both bad at long distance stuff."

"Maybe."

"Hey, once this is all over with, I'll play your wingman if you'll play mine." Danielle nudged Rachel's arm, earning a chuckle.

"I don't think that would work out well. My friends would be too old, and yours would be too young."

"Aww. What if I just run up to other doctors and go, 'Hey. Heeyyy. That one over there is single. You should ask her out on a date.'"

"And you want me to do the same for you? 'Hey there, Mr. Twenty-year-old. As a doctor, I believe you should ask her out.'"

"Yeah!"

"Noooo. I'm afraid we're going to have to be content with taking care of our own romantic endeavors. But I'll let you know how mine goes when we get there."

"Hah, me too. Promise."


	6. Random Conversations Part Two

Danielle pulls out a cigarette out of a pack that she found and put it in her mouth.

"You put the killing thing between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to kill you!"

Rachel grabs the cigarette and tosses off onto the floor.

"Average person memes three times a year turns out to be a statistical error. Average person memes zero times a year. Danielle Harris, who memes ten thousand times a day, is an outlier and should not have been counted."

"...woah..." Danielle grabs Rachel's hand and lifts it up into the air, cheering, "One of us! One of us!"


	7. Root Of Evil

Six months.

A full six months between the time Danielle was supposed to get her last treatment, and the time she actually got it.

Six months since their life turned upside down and six months since the world was invaded.

Six months, they'd traveled alone together.

In that time, things changed. Rachel let go of the idea that help would be coming soon. Danielle grew more attentive to her partners moods and her finite energy, learned to pick up on the little signs of stress and knew when to let her recover, when to offer a kind word, when to push her into taking care of herself instead of her.

Rachel, in turn, learned more of Danielle's emotional needs, what to do to support her in kind.

They'd started playing games when they could. Verbal things, stuff that would keep their hands free. Something lighthearted, something to distract.

They were sleeping in the same room now, in the same bed. There was less of a chance of something sneaking up on one of them and the other not knowing if they kept close. It gave them both peace of mind.

But the most glaring change was how they responded to the...zombies, that they came across.

Instead of running at every instance, instead of doing what self-preservation dictated they do, the two started taking a more offensive approach. They wiped out smaller groups, thinned down larger ones as much as possible, killed individuals whenever they could. It was Rachel who started it, insisting they hunt down a handful of zombies that they caught wandering by a populated area. The humans must have heard the gunfire, but the two were in and out before anyone could investigate. That group was safer for their intervention.

That was their new purpose. Aside from looking for chemo, they now went after the infected, for the less of them there were, the less of a threat they posed. While it might seem that the hoard was endless, the point remained that the removal of even a single zombie might mean life or death for someone else down the road. It was a game of endurance now, a ploy for survival. Humanity has always been resilient, sooner or later they would rise above this.

Right now, though, they were at rest. Right now, Danielle was down with a cold.

Rachel picked a nice house and, after they'd ensured it was safe, settled down for what she hoped wouldn't be longer than a week or two. She stocked up on food, mostly canned goods that she'd found in the neighborhood, some bagged chips, extra blankets to combat the chilled weather.

She had a book to read while Danielle slept. Electricity wasn't a thing, it'd gone out months ago, so she had to keep by a window, but that was fine. Running water, thank goodness, was still available...though without maintenance she wasn't sure how well the pipes would hold long term. At least for now, they wouldn't have to deal with dehydration.

Somewhere along the way, Danielle got herself a little golden cross. Snagged from one of the houses they'd stayed at, though at the time it seemed strange that someone who wasn't religious in the slightest had an interested in wearing it. Rachel did ask, but she'd been distracted by the discussion of mythology itself, and never got a straight answer as to why, exactly, her partner thought it important enough to bring with them.

But now she knew.

Since that day, Danielle got more and more into the habit of talking about the catholic school she'd attended, going on about people she used to know, how her parents reacted, her thoughts and opinions therein. She brought her past up often, wondering aloud where everyone might be today, and Rachel knew that her thoughts were turning back toward her childhood as a form of nostalgia for easier times, a way of coping with the way things were at preset. The cross itself didn't bear religious significance for her, rather it served as a physical reminder of what once was.

Maybe it served, also, as a hope that things could one day return to that.

The room was quiet, and Rachel was focused on her book. The peace was nice for a change, a chance to recover. Danielle had been asleep for much of the day, and Rachel was giving her until the time the sun started to set to stay that way. Before it was completely dark she planned to wake her up, get her to drink and eat while they could still see.

Falling asleep herself was not a part of that plan. She didn't know how long she was down, though it couldn't have been more than a couple of hours, giving the light still streaming in from outside. Dazed, she put her book down on the floor and stretched, raised a hand to rub the sleep from her eyes.

Danielle was no longer in the room.

Instinctively going ridged, Rachel pulled herself upright and went off to find her. Likely she was just in the bathroom, but that didn't stop the panicked chill down her back at not knowing for sure. Instead of finding her in the bathroom, she found her in the kitchen, bent over one of the counters with the journal she was using as a sketchpad in front of her, pencil in hand and sharpener nearby.

Rachel frowned. "You're supposed to be resting."

"Woke up. Couldn't go back to sleep. Got an idea."

"Standing out here and straining yourself isn't going to get you feeling better."

"...I've been thinking about it a lot lately."

"Danielle."

Danielle didn't move. She was usually easy to deal with, but she did have a stubborn streak, and according to all the stories she'd been telling from school she was also prone to defiance. Rachel huffed, coming in from the doorway and going over to stand by her. She took a spot at Danielle's right, so she could rest her left hand on the back of her neck. As expected, the fever hadn't yet gone down. Heat pulsed into her skin, and when she pulled away the damp cool of sweat replaced it.

Rachel said, "You should drink some water and go lay back down."

The scratch of pencil against paper stopped, but the girl didn't move. Picking up the journal, she flipped back a few pages, then forward again, glancing over what she'd already drawn.

"I don't mind if you take that with you. You can still draw lying down, we'll just put you closer to the bedroom window."

Danielle turned around, book still in hand, leaning back against the counter. Without looking away from the paper, she said, "A long time ago...thousands and thousands of years ago...before there were bad people, there was one person, and they were angry. They didn't like how the people around them did things, and they didn't like it when others had more than they did. This frustration grew over time, every day of their life, like an ember burning across dry grass."

Folding her arms, Rachel turned and leaned against the counter herself. Evidently, her patient wasn't going to move until she said what she wanted to say.

"They isolated themself from the rest of the humans, and that only made things worse, for they grew to blame the rest of their kind for their loneliness. This anger consumed them, and it turned into the first malicious thought. When they died, the shadow in their heart lived on. It went from person to person, building the anger inside them, and when they, too, reached the point of malice, that shadow took what was in their hearts and used it to add to itself. It told people that things should be a certain way, that people should believe certain things and be restricted to certain rules, and it told them that if these rules were broken then they should be upset. The bigger this shadow got, the more it was able to breed malice, and the more its reach extended."

She paused, tapped her fingers against the journals cover, then went on.

"That is the nature of sin. Actions that don't hurt anyone and all the different ways of life, those are harmless. Sin is the act of looking at someone who hasn't hurt anyone else, and thinking that they're bad because they do or think or feel differently than you. Think of the pentagram. Wearing one doesn't make you a bad person, what makes a bad person is looking at someone who is wearing one and deciding that they're less than what you are. Sin is jealousy, sin is undeserved rage, sin is the malice for others itself."

Danielle held the journal up for Rachel to see.

Upon the pages, she'd drawn a dragon. A very sleek, serpentine dragon. It was just a rough sketch, jotted down quickly. It had its wings spread, head tilted up and back, horns sharp and following the curve of the head. There were no teeth, but the muzzle itself formed sharpened points to replace them. An impressive, yet horrifying maw stretched open in a soundless roar.

"This creature spreads itself into others. It creates sin, grows it, and then uses it to further it's own power. It rages against the world, and it commands all who will listen to rage alongside it. This is the concept of evil. I've... named it Lydia. This is Lydia."

Rachel stared at the image, more startled by the chosen name than anything else. "You do hold a grudge, don't you? I take it she's going to be the main villain?" 

"Yes." She closed the book, hugged it close to her chest. Her eyes weren't meeting Rachel's, she'd not so much as glanced at her throughout the conversation. Turning around, Danielle faced away from her, side pressing into the counter. "She's going to be the bad guy. Every story needs an antagonist, be it a person or a situation, something that needs to be overcome."

A pause, a lull that almost made Rachel think maybe she was done until she broke the silence again.

"Lydia grew until she was full of enough sin that she could break herself apart into smaller pieces. Those pieces became tiny versions of herself that bend to her will. An army of demons. These demons have a venomous bite. Anything that gets bitten by them dies."

That...was too familiar to be coincidence. "Why would she want to use her army to kill off humans if she needs them for her own power?"

"I don't know. Maybe she's using grief to breed anger in the survivors. Maybe she just hates humans and she's doing it for fun." Danielle drew in a breath. "But since she's the bad guy, then there need to be good guys. And I thought...we could be the good guys."

"Excuse me?"

"We could be the good guys. We could get rid of the demons and we could fight Lydia, and we'd win, because we're the good guys, and the good guys always win."

It was at the end of that sentence that Rachel picked up on a wavering in her voice, an edge of strain. She wasn't entirely sure how to respond to that, and the tension that stretched between them made her skin prickle.

After a few moments, Danielle pressed, her voice a little quieter, "...wouldn't that make a good story?"

"I...it would. Yes." 

Rachel put a hand on her shoulder, offering her presence, feeling more than seeing Danielle tighten her hold on the book.

Danielle said, "...I had a bad dream, but it wasn't about them. It was about us. I don't want to go back into that room, Rachel."

"Would talking about it help?"

"No."

"How about we move into the living room? You can take the couch."

"You should take the couch. I can use one of the recliners."

"I'm still reading a book, and the recliners are closer to the window."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

Rachel never found out what exactly happened in that dream, but she could hazard a guess.

They relocated in the livingroom. She coaxed some food and some water into her patient and left her to sleep, curling up in the recliner in preperation to use the rest of the day's light to her advantage.

She made it a point to not drift off again, and when the sun went down, they both wound up struggling to fit on that couch.

It wasn't until early morning that Rachel and Danielle both remembered the fact that they were surrounded by abandoned houses and that they could have simply gone to another one with a different bedroom if they'd thought about it.


	8. Little Things

It was the little things that could make or break a day.

Tiny, seemingly insignificant details, barely blips on the radar when compared to the looming threat around them.

A moment of peace, the frustration of leaving for their next destination late, the finding of a favorite meal, the loss of a half finished book.

Little things that didn't mean much in the big picture.

Danielle seemed to like bringing her stuff that she thought she'd like. She always offered her the first pick of their food supply, tended to press the matter of sleep if she didn't think Rachel was getting enough.

She shouldn't be doing that. Rachel didn't need anyone to take care of her, and indeed, it was Rachel who needed to take care of her patient.

But Danielle was stubborn, and when it came right down to it Rachel didn't entirely mind the concern. (Indeed, if not for this concern, she might have gone past her own limits at least a dozen points by now. For as much as she cared about others, she was never that skilled in focusing that same care toward herself.)

There were many, many little things that threatened to break them.

Danielle made it a point to keep the good things outnumbering the bad. Rachel did her best to follow suit.


	9. Memory

The first time it happened, they were in the middle of a hunt.

Guns full of bullets, getting ready to ambush a group of what must have been a good twenty or so zombies.

They'd been talking in hushed voices, planning their attack. It was quick, and so distracted with everything else in the moment, Rachel couldn't have been sure if she'd actually heard it or not.

Danielle called her 'Angel.'

She didn't react at the glance, the raised eyebrow. In fact, her nonchalance was enough to almost make Rachel shrug the event off entirely.

But the next time Danielle addressed her, she said 'Doctor.'


	10. Lingering Fears

There were times Danielle found she could sleep in peace. On good nights, she was fine.

This was not a good night.

It wasn't a problem she'd had to deal with since she was young, a child plagued with night-terrors who was always running to her parents' room for comfort. Being with them didn't always make the bad dreams go away, but it did make her feel safe enough to go back to sleep.

The dreams were back, but her parents weren't around anymore. Rachel was there for her instead. She didn't have to be. There were a lot of things Rachel didn't have to do, yet kept doing anyway. Even before they'd been caught on their own, before they'd left the group, she'd stuck with her beyond what was needed. With the fall of the hospital, the reign of zombies, every responsibility Rachel once held as her doctor was null and void.

It wasn't her job to help her anymore. There were no jobs, no rules to regulate, no salary as a reward, just safety in numbers.

Back when this started, they'd been with a group of around twenty people or so, and these weren't people from the hospital. They'd run across them after getting outside, accompanied by a single lucky intern. Of course people gravitated toward the more experienced doctor, and when Rachel said that they needed to go to another hospital and finish her treatment, there was little argument. They went where she directed, going on foot for lack of a car.

It took a long time to get there, and of course when they got there they found that the building had no oncology department. When Rachel proceeded to find a map and start looking for another hospital in another city to start toward, that's when there were problems. The rest of the group didn't want to go. One guy in particular was the most vocal about it, going up to the front to speak for the rest.

Danielle was fine, he'd said, and he'd said that they had more important things to worry about. They needed to focus on finding a safe place to stay while everyone waited for the help that was sure to come.

There were harsh words, yelling, anger. It wasn't good, but it wasn't violent, either. It was just an argument between two very afraid people who had two different sets of priorities.

This was where her imagination got the better of her. At least if you asked her, that's what she'd have said. She blamed her imagination rather than her recent trauma, blamed her rush of panic on her own self, not the fact that she'd seen her parents eaten alive less than a month before. In the moment that argument took place, Danielle was very aware of the fact that several members of the opposing group were armed, where Rachel was not.

She put herself between them, snarling at the guy to back off. When her anger fueled his own, the intern stepped in to call him off, and that was when Rachel grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her away from them.

It was fast, over in a few minutes, but those few minutes haunted her in much the same way the loss of her parents did.

When she wasn't thinking about them, when she wasn't recreating the scene again and again like a movie on repeat, adding more horrific details with each loop, imagining what happened to them after she ran off... when she wasn't caught in the horror of what happened in the hospital that day, Danielle found herself focused on what could have happened with Rachel. She could see the group turning on them, she could hear her partner scream, feel arms restrain her and hold her back, as vivid as it would be if it was happening now.

It started out as nightmares, but more and more these images pressed into her waking mind, kept at bay during daylight but creeping in when the sun went down. Darkness loomed in, near complete silence and no activity left to distract herself.

It was like trying not to think about a polar bear. The moment you make a conscious effort not to, the more you're going to think about that damn bear.

There was safety in numbers, yet a danger in them too. Zombies alone were enough to instill a fear of crowds, and her constant flashbacks to an angry mob didn't help matters. A big part of her wanted to tell Rachel that they needed to stop wandering around trying to find chemo, that there was no point in continuing to search for it when they'd found just one viable round in the span of over a year, but a bigger part of her knew that any attempt to find another group was going to end in disaster.

Danielle curled up tighter where she lay, only realizing she'd broken out into a sweat when she felt the blanket cling to her.

Humans naturally helped each other, it was part of how they evolved, but all those shows on television told her constantly that when the undead took over, it would be other humans that would be the biggest threat. That was complete bullshit, she knew that, she knew, but it couldn't stop the throb of panic, the feel of her arms pinned behind her back even though they were really wrapped about her chest, a tight and trembling self-hug.

When Rachel touched her shoulder, it sent a shockwave of reality through her, electricity crackling behind her eyes as she flinced.

"...Danielle?"

Calm, always calm, a countermeasure against the anxiety. For a moment that felt much longer than what it was, Danielle lay there, not quite able to move. Rachel came closer, wrapping an arm around her, her voice a gentle press. "Danielle...you're having a nightmare."

Not a nightmare, can't have a nightmare if you're not asleep, but the distinction didn't matter. Danielle rolled over and buried herself into Rachel's front, arms wrapping around her, fingers curling into the back of her shirt. She clung onto her like a lifeline, pressure building painfully behind her eyes.

"I'm sorry," Danelle said, voice hushed, strangled, smothered by the solid dark around them.

She knows Rachel thinks it's about waking her up when she responds with, "It's okay. You've done nothing wrong."

And regardless of whether it was from the zombies, or from the people, the fact remand that if anything happened to her, it was going to be Danielle's fault. She knew that Rachel wouldn't see it that way, but Danielle did.

So when Rachel asks, "Do you want to talk about it?"

The answer is the same as it's been for months now.

"No."


	11. Random Conversations Part Three

"You know...the first thing I ever said to my boyfriend was 'fuck off?'" Danielle said one morning.

"How romantic." Rachel replied.

"No, really. I never did tell you how it started, did I? Well... Lydia and I always had a problem, you know? We were against each other from day one. She had a problem with an atheist attending her catholic school, and she wanted me to know it. I minded my own business, I kept to myself, and she comes up to me and acts like an asshole. And she, like we're living some bad high-school sitcom, she knocks my books out of my hands. Oh, no, you inconvenienced me for thirty seconds. The agony. So I'm picking these books up, and...well, I'm angry. And this guy comes up to me, he's trying to help, and I'm not in the mood for any of that, so I tell him to mind his own business and keep the hell away from me."

Danielle pauses, here. Thoughtful.

She goes on, "I'm not proud of it, actually. I was so angry back then, Dr. Evans. At everyone. I looked at all the Catholics around me and I assumed they were all the same. So, I look at this guy, and I see the cross he's wearing, and I assume that he's just like the rest of them. I told him off and I got my stuff and I went on my way. A few days later, and I catch her cornering that same guy and some girl in a corner, yelling at them. You see, Andrew and Elise were friends for a long time before they came to school. Childhood friends, they tended to hang out wherever they had the chance. They grew up together. Lydia saw that, and she was like, 'holy shit a guy and a girl hanging out? For shame!' Never-mind that Elise was gay, and even if she wasn't, she had no interest in Andrew aside from being his best friend."

"Ugh."

"I know, right? So I go up to them, and I'm like, 'She's fucking with you, too?' and they were like, 'yeah,' and that was when we were friends. We took a stand against her, became everything she hates just because we could. That's why I asked Andrew out, actually. Figured if she hated the unmarried guy and girl being friends, she'd actively despise Andrew and I making out in the halls between class."

"...you started dating over a grudge?"

"Yeah. I suppose, looking back, it was never going to last with our reasoning...but you know. We would have done anything to piss her off. We even found all the cool teachers. Some of them, they were just as bad as she was, but some of them were more level headed. Those were the ones we made friends with. The fun part is that the town priest, 'cause, you know, Catholic school, we all had to go see him, he was the coolest guy. Most of the time, he took our side. As you can imagine, that got under her skin faster than anything else. The priest himself agreed with us! What's Lydia gonna do?" Danielle lowered her voice, like she was telling a secret. "I think he had a girlfriend. Pretty girl. Shy. Always hung out in the back. The two of them were pretty tight. Ethan and Lilly. I gave them little matching goat plushes one day, it was great."

"Cute."

"Mmm."

Just like that, the conversation fell silent. Rachel waited for Danielle to go on with her story. When she didn't, she prompted with a quiet, "Danielle?"

It took a moment for her to answer. When she did, her voice was soft, far away. Not nearly as enthused as it was. "I never contacted them, after I graduated. Not even when I got sick. I had their numbers, their email. Andrew and Elise's both. I could have dropped in to say hi, but I never did. I never let them know how I was doing...and now they might be dead. I haven't heard from them for years."

The words hung in the air. Rachel kept quiet.

Danielle continued, "It all felt so important back then. Our grudge, the fighting. Like we were waging some sort of revolution against her. It was just high-school shit. They felt so...so essential to me, once. Like they were a part of me. But I didn't even send them a message to let them know, 'Hey. I have cancer. Hope ya'll are doing well.' We promised each other we'd be a part of one another's life after all of that, and then we weren't. I should've talked to them when I had the chance."

A pause. A heartbeat.

"I'd like to believe they're alive. Andrew and Elise, even Lydia. I mean, she was an asshole, but I never wanted her dead. God, I can hear her now. 'Danny, you're the reason the zombies are happening. If only you hadn't ward those pentagrams.' Yeah, right. Like I caused the apocalypse because of my choice in jewelry. I hated that nickname. Danny. Made me swear off nicknames forever. Guess that means you don't have to deal with being called 'Rach', eh?"

Rachel snorted under her breath.

She didn't have much else to say.


	12. Resentment

Rachel learned from the last time she led Danielle around while she was angry.

Instead of holding any part of her body, instead of allowing herself to grip onto flesh that might bruise, she holds onto her shirt sleeve. The cloth is twisted between her fingers, stretched tight, further than it should be as she keeps a firm hold, marching them both back toward the house they were staying at. Neither of them say a word, but it is not a quiet walk. The air is stiff, uncomfortably solid, and every little noise seems to cut through it like a blade.

As soon as they're through the door, she takes her into the kitchen. Pulling a chair out, Rachel gave a sharp command of, "Sit," before stepping away in search of the bag that held their medical supplies.

She refused to meet Danielle's gaze when she returned. Right now, she was focused on what had to be done. She got what she needed out of the bag, pulled the bloody gauze away from Danielle's arm, and set to cleaning the wound. It's a nasty cut, starting just above the back of the hand and stretching up toward the elbow. It was several inches long and ragged, torn from where the metal fence caught her.

Rachel took extra care in being gentle with the cleaning, reminding herself to keep careful, steady movements. As soon as she was sure the wound was clean, she applied a local painkiller, numbing the area enough that she could start stitching it closed.

Still, neither of them spoke. She could feel Danielle's gaze on her as she worked, soon finishing up with the stitches, and then moving on to wrapping her arm up in proper bandages.

As soon as she was done, she stood and started putting away what needed to be put away, throwing out whatever they could no longer use.

It was Danielle who spoke first. "I've no idea what you think being all huffy at me is going to do, but if you're trying to make me feel bad, it's not working. I helped you, you know."

"You put yourself in danger is what you did."

It was a stupid mistake. They'd already known there were too many zombies to take out completely, but they could have at least thinned them out. It went poorly. They got separated, Rachel wound up halfway up a ladder of a neighborhood water tower with several dozen of the undead surrounding its base, and neither she nor Danielle had enough ammo to get them all. Danielle's response to this was to use herself as bait.

She got their attention and they wound up chasing her through hell and back.

While on the subject of ammo, Rachel grabbed a few spare cartridges and reloaded, then shoved the rest into Danielle's hands. Anger is no excuse for either of them to be under-prepared for emergencies.

Over the telltale clicking of metal on metal, Danielle responded, "You can't hold on to a ladder forever, and I'd be willing to bet your arms would have given out before they decided you weren't worth the trouble."

"I could have handled it."

"Not from where I was standing."

"It's my responsibility to look after you. Not the other way around."

"Uh, no. We look after each other, that's how this works."

Rachel felt the ice harden her words, busying herself by sorting through the bags as an excuse to keep her back to the other. "You're acting like a child."

A snort of laughter from behind, a shift to signal that Danielle was up on her feet. Her voice sharpened, heat flaring up in her tone. "Oh, right, I'm a child now. Listen here, old lady, when people say that someone else is acting like a child, it means 'you're opinion is shit, and you need to shut up.'"

"Actually, it means you're being immature and you're making poor decisions. You're lucky you got out of that with no more than a cut."

"So you'd rather I just let you just hang up there all day with a bunch of monsters waiting under you?"

"I would have rather you'd not drawn every monster in the area toward you just to get me down when I was in no immediate danger. You could have gotten bit, Danielle, and then there's nothing either of us would have been able to do."

"You could have gotten bit, too."

"I'd rather it be me than you. I am your doctor, and it's my responsibility to-"

Danielle interrupted, "You're not my doctor anymore! You're not anyone's doctor, the hospitals are closed!"

Rachel turned to face her, finally, and she found herself met with blazing honey-brown eyes. Every inch of the young blond's stance screamed defiance, from her squared shoulders to her hands curled into fists. Rachel said, "I'm still your doctor."

"Fine. You're my doctor, then. You want to play this game? I'd rather be the one to get bit because out of the two of us, you're the one most likely to survive this mess. Besides, doc, you can go to any group of humans out there and be welcomed with open arms because no one's going to fuck with you in the apocalypse. I can't."

"This isn't a contest, and which of us survives does not depend on our skill-sets. You were reckless. You put yourself in danger needlessly, and you need to understand that you can't take those kinds of risks."

"I'm not going to apologize for saving your life."

"I don't need you risking yourself when we go out."

"I don't need you dying and leaving me to deal with this alone!"

It was the way that Danielle's voice cracked that gave Rachel pause. Too late, she saw something down past her anger, a wet sheen in those flaring eyes. Something sharper than grief and far too close to panic for her liking.

That pause was more than enough.

"Fuck this," Danielle snapped, breaking the lull in the argument, and before anything else could be said, she fled from the room. One of the bedroom doors slammed behind her.

Rachel scoffed, frustration rekindled at the sound. Like that was supposed to prove that Danielle wasn't being childish.

She didn't follow her. Instead, she went to the other bedroom in the house, closing the door behind her.

It took only a half hour for her to calm down. It took a full hour for her to go over the details of the argument itself, and realize that yes, Danielle was scared when she left. Of course she was. She was just as scared as Rachel.

It took two hours for guilt to set in, and by two and a half hours, Rachel started to worry.

There were things the two of them never spoke of, topics they avoided, issues that they pretended weren't there. There was a reason this argument happened, and it was more than just a disagreement about what should and shouldn't have happened.

At the third hour mark, Rachel pulled a couple of pop-open cans from their supply, one of fruit and one of re-fried beans, and she brought them to the door of Danielle's room. She knocked, and said, "...it's been a while. You should eat something soon."

No response.

She said, "I won't make you come out right now...but there's food outside the door, when you want it."

Nothing.

She tried the knob, and unsurprisingly, it was locked. "...are you alright?" Swallowing hard, she rephrased what it was she was asking. "I need to know that you're safe, Danielle."

That got a response. "I'm fine. I'm not going anywhere."

Danielle's voice was quiet now. Small. Exhausted and upset, but alive. Rachel hovered by the door for a moment, before quietly retreating for the night.

 


	13. Reconciliation

Danielle wished she had access to music.

Not just to kill the silence, but as a way to self-soothe. Melodies and the repetition of words, something to get lost in until the stress passed. After a bad day, she always found some song or another to listen to until she felt better.

She supposed she could find an abandoned music player if she really wanted to, but even if she found one the chances of her finding one that specifically had what she was looking for were slim. Everyone had a different taste in music, after all.

The closest thing she had, then, was her own self.

She sang quietly under her breath, laying in someone else’s bed, finger tapping out imaginary beats upon someone else’s wall.

When the worst of it passed, she dozed, a quiet, sleepy, thoughtless daze.

They say that when you sleep, your brain uses the lapse in consciousnesses to sort through everything you experienced in your waking hours. It throws out what you don’t need and it reinforces what you do. When Danielle awoke, the sun was almost set. The world held a grey hue, the last few rays of light lingering over the far off horizon. Listless, she watched that light fade, watched the world slowly darken until the only light that remained were the stars flickering out beyond the window glass.

The resentment, the anger, the panic, it all faded. What remained was grief.

A hollow, gaping emptiness, a heavy loneliness, and a bone-deep desire to not be alone anymore.

For a long time, she lay there, inwardly cringing at the argument they’d had. Guilt welled, a growing resentment directed inward. Shouldn’t have gotten angry. Shouldn’t have snapped. Shouldn’t have said the things she’d said.

Was Rachel still upset with her?

For a while, she told herself that she’d wait until morning to try and discuss things with her. For a while, she stayed where she was, intending not to leave that night. But the longer she lay in the dark, the worse she felt.

In the dead of night, she pulled herself off of the bed. The house was full of shadows that were black as pitch, the stars not nearly enough to give her a sense of what was where. She had to navigate through touch and memory.

It’d be easier if they didn’t switch houses every other day.

Every movement felt too loud, every footstep and creak of the wayward floorboard enough to set her heart pounding in spurts of panic. Not even the outline of her surroundings remained visible, and in the darkness, something was watching her.

Something that was quieter than she was, something that could see her, something that watched and waited.

Danielle froze in place and listened to the silence, the faint ringing that came with the lack of all other noise, and she heard nothing. A shiver ran down the length of her back, and although nothing moved, she could still feel it. A pair of eyes like a weight on her, icy cold and darkest blue, teeth curved in a smile, an all-consuming cruelty that slunk around her just outside the reach of her senses.

She closed her eyes, as if closing them somehow denied that darkness. Fingers flexed, and she took in a deep breath that was far louder than it had any right to be, let it out in a slow and shaky exhale. This was stupid, there was nothing there. There was absolutely nothing there. They always, always checked these houses for the presence of any zombies before they settled in. If in this house lived a monster that awaited them, it would have been found and disposed of long before then.

And besides, the chances of Lydia knowing or even caring about their location were nonexistent at best.

It was just her, her own self. Nothing else. She started forward, and nearly jumped out of her skin when the floor creaked below her, drawing out a curse from under her breath.

This was why they kept their weapons away from themselves at night. Danielle’s was currently under the bed in the next room, and Rachel typically kept hers in the bookshelves.

Ignoring the way her nerves pricked and clenched, Danielle forced herself forward, fingertips trailing along a wall. The other bedroom should be around the corner, down the hall…past the bathroom? Past the bathroom.

The door was unlocked. Not open, but unlocked, and for fear of tripping on the bed when she found it, she knelt down and crawled the rest of the way.

Once she found the edge she pulled herself up, fingertips trailing over the blanket until she found something solid and warm. Knowing now where Rachel was, she pulled herself onto the bed, not bothering to try and get under the covers. She thought she was quiet enough not to wake the other, and maybe she was, maybe Rachel was having a hard time sleeping, but the moment she was close an arm wrapped around her and folded her in tight.

She swallowed hard and pressed herself as hard against Rachel as she could, her voice hushed and cracking as she broke the silence. “I’m sorry-!”

“Don’t be sorry. We were both saying the same thing.”

“I just don’t want anything bad to happen to you…! I couldn’t-I can’t handle that, I need you to be okay. I shouldn’t have gotten angry, I…”

“It’s okay. I’m okay, and you’re okay. We’re both fine, and that’s what matters. I was worried about you, too, and I should have handled it better. I don’t want you to get hurt, either. We were saying the same thing, Danielle.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too. But we’re okay. It’s okay. I still care, if you’re worried that’s changed.”

Fingers brushed through Danielle’s hair, nail-tips trailing down the back of her neck. Rachel’s grip tightened as she half curled about her, a protective hold that encouraged Danielle to bury her face into her shoulder and cling all the more. “I still care, too,” she said, voice shaky, but softer than before.

In the morning, they would talk things out, but for right now, they lay together in a calm quiet.


	14. Popcorn

Rachel didn't realize how hard she was smiling until she felt her jaw starting to ache.

Kneeling on the ground, she watched the little bundle of fur dart around in circles, toy clamped firmly in his mouth. After a good minute of throttling the squeaky, he turned and darted back to her, dropping it on the floor and giving her that look. Without hesitation, she snatched it up, tempted him into a short game of tug-of-war, and then threw it across the room for him to chase. 

Dogs weren't seen too often these days. So relent on a human presence, those that survived typically did so because of their owners. Occasionally they'd catch sight of a wild dog wandering the streets, but they were always big, and never quite so eager to interact after running from the zombies for so long. 

This one was too small to survive on his own. In addition he was well-fed, and welcoming of a human presence. Until recently he'd been with a group.

"Your veterinarian is showing, doctor." Danielle lay on her back on the couch, one leg draped over the back cushions. Her voice was light, playful, reflective of the mood. 

"Is it? Good to know it's still there."

When the dog returned to her, she picked him up and hugged him, his tail batting against her side. His fur was clean and soft, curly, sandy colored. A terrier mixed with something she couldn't identify. 

"Play with us?" Rachel offered.

"I don't want to take him away from you."

"I've had him for half the day. Come on, you said you wanted a dog, didn't you?"  
  
Danielle chuckled. Movements slowed with the weight of a day's travel, she pulled herself down onto the floor with her and reached for the squeaky, giving it a good throw. When he brought it back she scratched at his ears, saying, "Who's a good boy, Popcorn? You're a good boy!"

The name came from the tag he wore around his neck. Danielle was deeply amused by the name when he'd first run up to them, but the more they both used it, the more Rachel felt the name was fitting.

Popcorn was with them for a full week, and it was one of the best weeks they could have had, all things considered. The best part of the story, though, was how it ended.

They found Popcorn's group hiding out in an apartment nearby. Several families, surviving together, and a little girl named Sarah who called the dog by name when she saw him. 


	15. Random Conversations Part Four

Rachel watches as the pencil scratches its way against the paper. Her hand rests on the back of Danielle's chair, taking in the image that formed.

"You made me an angel," she says.

Danielle responds, "I thought it was fitting. You're a healer."

That was true, yet she was willing to bet that it wasn't the real reason. Or at least, not the entire reason.

Rachel sounds an awful lot like Angel, doesn't it? She'd never thought about it until she'd had to question which name she'd heard herself called. 

The word angel, and the cross around Danielle's neck.

Danielle continued. "The demons infect those they get close to. Angels can reverse that. They can't do it on a mass scale, there are too many bad guys, but..." She moved the pencil away from the paper to tap the point against the table in thought. "They help those they can."

"...does she help your character?"

"Yes. I figure since they're fighting the demons the most, they have to deal with getting rid of sin a lot. Like...sure, they're the heroes, but if they could just beat up the entire hoard then the story would be over. They have to take breaks, and deal with smaller groups as they come."

"Like what we do with the zombies."

"Yeah."

A brief lull. Rachel moved her hand from the back of the chair to Danielle's shoulder. "We work together."

"We do. They will, too. They'll get rid of the demons, and go after Lydia." She clicked her tongue. "I think...I'm going to incorporate holy water. As a healing method. Something only the angel can use. Something they have to keep stocked up on."

"Something they'll only find in churches?"

"Something they'll only find in churches." Danielle chuckled, her shoulder rolling with it. "God, what am I writing? I would've thrown this story out the window if I'd read it a few years back."

"A few years back, we didn't have zombies. And besides," Rachel poked the side of Danielle's head lightly, "You're writing sin as the concept of malice, not pushing anything bad at anyone."

"Eeehh...I'm gonna wanna put that in there somewhere. Before someone else reads it and gets the wrong idea. Doubt anyone's gonna read it, but they might. Maybe in thirty years or so they'll find it while looking through all these buildings."

"The zombies aren't going to last thirty years, Danielle."

"Maybe they will. They've lasted over a year."

Danielle put the pencil down, raised her hand to rest it on Rachel's own.

"It's...just a comic," Danielle said. "But...if someone were to read it someday, I'd like them to take something positive away from it. All the good stories are products of their time, they have a message, or a reflection of some sort. I want this one to mean something. I want it...I want it to mean hope. I want it to be hopeful."

Rachel turned her hand to wrap it around Danielle's own. "We'll make it hopeful, then."

 

 


	16. Manipulation

In hindsight, she'd had a manipulative streak for a really long time. Lydia, awful, horrible person as she was, wasn't wrong when she used the word.

Manipulation: A universally negative term. It was convincing someone to do something they might not have otherwise done.

Back then, Danielle had been good with others. Not perfect, no, there were times she failed to read a room, but still...a good part of her life in high-school involved making friends with the right people. Get close to those in positions of power. Charm them, tell them what they want to hear. Use them to defend friends and go after enemies. It'd taken her a while to learn the system, but she did. She'd gotten things done, way back when.

There should be a word for the act of manipulation when it's done for a positive goal, something that doesn't automatically bring up thoughts of a big bad working at the strings to bring the hero down. A word for working an unfair hierarchy to the underdog's advantage.

Manipulative, Lydia once said.

Maybe a better word for it would have been networking.

 


	17. Twenty One

Given that there was no one around who was willing to use their resources for printing out a 2015 calendar, Rachel restarted from day one of the 2014 version that they had with them when the year ran out. Calendars were meant to reset when they ended, after all. 

Eat your heart out, end of 2012.

...it'd be a lot funnier if the zombie apocalypse hadn't happened.

Regardless, she'd been looking over their calendar one day. Still early 2015, mid April, Danielle peering over her shoulder.

With a hushed voice, quiet with the realization, Danielle said, "I'm twenty-one."

Rachel glanced over at her. When she responded, she heard that same hushed tone come from herself.

"I'm thirty-seven."

It shouldn't have been surprising. Simple math: It'd been a year since the zombies came, and so they were both a year older than where they'd started. 

Rachel's thoughts turned to her brother, feeling a sharp pang at the knowledge that he'd be twenty-eight now. She'd never missed Jasper's birthday before, and he rarely missed hers. 

With a low chuckle, Danielle nudged her with her elbow. "Three years before the big forty. I knew you were old, but I never expected..."

"Gee, thanks." She answered, frowning in jest. "At least I'm not a kid."

"Hey! I'm not a kid anymore. I could even drink now if I wanted!"

"I'm still twice your age." Rachel poked at the side of Danielle's head. "That makes you a kid."

Danielle caught her hand and met her eyes in defiance. "Alright, old lady. If you're gonna be that way, then I'm gonna start thinking of ways to fuck up your lawn." 

She couldn't stop the grin from forming. "Joke's on you. I don't have a lawn."

"I'll grow you a lawn for the express purpose of fucking it up, then we'll see who's laughing."

After a few more rounds of banter, they inventoried their supplies and went over the map. Next hospital was still too far away for her liking. They needed to keep moving, but before that, they needed to restock.

Danielle leaned on her, giving a thoughtful hum. "I can drink now. Maybe we should throw alcohol onto our shopping list."

"Alcohol isn't good for you."

"Zombies aren't good for you, either."

"Are you really sure you want to get drunk with them wandering about?"

"Sure! Why not? We can be safe about it. Come on...you could probably use something, yourself."

"Bold of you to assume I'm one for drinking."

"Are you?"  
  
"...sometimes."

"Then we should! It'll be fun. We need a break. And it'll give us something other than sleeping to do at night."

Rachel snorted, her arms folded, though her tone remained light. "We're not drinking when it's dark. It'd dangerous to wander about in strange places when we can't see what we're doing. But...we can do it in the evening. Few hours before sundown. If we can even find something in the first place."

"Sounds great! We'll have to keep on the lookout." Danielle looped an arm around Rachel's own. "Drinking buddies to the end!"

"Drinking buddies. But food buddies first."

"Yes, yes. Food buddies first."


	18. A Day Off

Rachel was more of a fruity drink person, but when one's only option is Jagermeister, then it's Jagermeister one must go with.

Since they were doing this, they were doing it as safely as was possible. The house had been gone over several times, every door and window locked, curtains drawn, their weapons unloaded and put away in a far room. The first aid kit put out on a table in plain view, all breakables removed from the area.

On a less serious note, they'd eaten beforehand and had gone on to fill up several water bottles for the after-care. Pillows and every blanket available formed a mini mountain in the center of the living room.

Rachel, of course, had gone over the typical speech about not drinking too much before they started. With a small cup, she measured out what was roughly a shot, and handed it over. 

Danielle downed it, because that was what you did with shots, and good god the look on her face made everything worth it. She shuddered, making a sound similar to a cat getting ready to rid itself of a hairball, mouth curling in sheer revulsion. Rachel cackled, a hand raised to cover the flash of a smile.

"Gross." Danielle muttered.

"People rarely drink for the taste."

"Ugh. You'd think they'd find a way to make it better. Holy shit."

"They did. Pure alcohol is so much worse."

"Fuck."

"Remember, we can stop whenever you want." Rachel poured out another shot as she said this, pausing for a moment to steel herself.

"Tch. It's gonna take more than that to stop me."

"I imagine, but let's wait a few minutes before doing another."

With that, it was her turn to gag, the shudder running down the length of her back as the taste blazed over her tongue and down her throat. Sharp, bitter, and filled with so much mint-leaf she might as well have been chugging the plant's essence. It might be made with dozens of different herbs, and she could definitely taste some of the citrus in there, but the mint itself was overpowering. 

"It's like chamomile," she spat as her body's reaction to it died down. "But disgusting."

Danielle snorted through her nose, not bothering to hide the grin. "At least I don't feel so bad now."

"Oh, hush."

Sitting together on the couch, they handed the cup back and fourth. Being the responsible one, Rachel kept tabs on how many they'd had, keeping in mind that Danielle was shorter than her, weighed less, and was thus libel to reach her limit first. 

It'd been so long since her last drink, she'd almost forgotten what it was like. Talking didn't seem to take up so much energy, the weight of everything around her didn't seem to press in so much. Shoulder to shoulder, Danielle's legs kicking back and fourth absently, the two of them did what they usually did to pass the time, and just conversed. She told Danielle about college life and people she'd known from her internship, and Danielle told her stories from school.

"One time," she said, "Lydia decided to pull a Carrie on me. Don't know if she knew about the movie or not, but she like, dumped a bunch of paint on me when we were working on a project together. Doesn't seem like the kind of thing she'd watch but...anyway, so of course I go, and I say, _'you know what this means, Lyds, don't you? It means you're getting a hug.'"_

"Oh no."

"Hey, if she's going to get me covered in paint, she's gonna get covered in paint too. And it was worse for her, I was wearing black at the time, she was wearing white."

"Oh nooo."

"Oh yes."

When she started losing the feeling in her lower body and the room started to feel all soft and wavy, she cut them both off, put the cup and what was left of the bottle by the couch. She said, "You talk about school a lot, but it doesn't seem like you had a good time there."

"Nah," Danielle said, "But it makes for a good story. And you know I'm all about the stories. Best part is that it had a happy ending. None of us put up with Lyds' shit anymore and I got the hell out of there."

Danielle leaned on her, arm looping around her own, face pressed against her shoulder. Rachel found one of her hands with the one not currently being held, gave it a squeeze. "Yeah. Although...I'm not sure everything that happened afterword would still count as a happy ending..."

"We're not counting what happened after. I'm not ending it with, _'and then zombies happened!'_ The fact that zombies happened doesn't take away from the good parts."

"Mmm."

"...I don't like sad endings. There's enough bad shit going on, at least let the fiction we write be positive." Danielle shifted, moving from sitting against Rachel's shoulder to resting on her back, legs resting on the arm of the couch and the back of her head on her lap. She looked up, both hands fidgeting with one of her own, bending and straightening the knuckles. "All my stories are going to end on a happy note."

"Does that mean that the angel and the heroine are going to beat all the demons?"

"Probably..." She clicked her tongue, "I'm not going to kill off the main character, either. I got a book from the library that did that once. The writer took these wolf pups and followed them throughout their life, set them up like they were going to have some sort of peace happen between them and the humans living nearby, and then they went and offed the main guy before he could make that treaty happen. I hated that. Go after side characters, leave the main alone."

"What if the main is a villain?"

"Don't make your main a villain."

"But making the main a villain is how we get lines like, _'I'll take a potato chip...and eat it!'"_

It made Danielle laugh, bright and bubbly and much louder than it usually was. "Okay, you can make your main a villain, but only if he gets to say that."

Rachel felt herself smile, felt herself practically beaming. No doubt about it, it was the alcohol, but she felt a rush of affection. Happy to make her laugh, happy that, in this moment, everything was okay. She looked down, taking in the light in Danielle's eyes, the ever present spark so reminiscent of a dancing flame.

Danielle moved again, pulled herself up into a sitting position to wrap her arms about Rachel's waist, who responded in kind, nuzzling into the top of her head.

"If zombies had to happen," Danielle said, "I'm glad I wound up tagging along with you."

If they had to have happened. Rachel thought to a year back, back before everything. It was a difficult concept to consider, especially drunk, what life had once been like. Humans could get used to so many things for the sake of survival. For as much as they'd come to rely on one another, it was a fact that if not for the outbreak, they never would have known a thing about each other.

Did that make it worth it...? Hell no. The instinct to protect rose, prompting her to tighten her grip. It would have been better if none of this had happened at all. Danielle could have gone back to college, and Rachel could have gone back to work, and even if they'd never known each other outside of doctor and patient at least they would have been safe. If there'd been some other way for them to have been friends that didn't involve zombies, that was one thing...although she couldn't imagine such a scenario.

"I would have rathered the zombies didn't happen at all," Rachel said after a moment, "But...I agree. If they had to happen, then I couldn't imagine a better zombie hunting partner."

With that, Rachel noted a distinct lack of a desire to move, and it was that which told her that it was time to do just that before they both fell asleep on the couch and wound up sore in the morning. Coaxing Danielle to her feet, they got up and moved over to the mountain of blankets and pillows, half collapsing on it. 

Danielle curled up at her side, clinging onto her white coat while Rachel kept an arm wrapped around her even now. The blankets were mostly under them, they'd enough body heat to stay warm, it was comfort they needed. 

"Remember to drink water, when you wake up," Rachel said. "And eat something, don't wait for me if you wake up before I do."

Danielle murmured an agreement, and the last few moments of conscious thought passed in a gentle silence.


	19. Morning

It took her a few moments to really find awareness after her eyes opened. A brief, yet infinite span of time where she knew just herself and nothing else.

The first thing she noticed was that the sun was up. Her mouth was dry. She felt the faintest discomfort pulsing at the back of her head, and recognized it as the effects of a mild hangover. 

She exhaled a slow, even breath, lips pressed into a thin line as she worked up the energy to move. The first attempt to get up failed as every muscle in her body demanded to be stretched, instinct overtaking rational thought until her arms flexed up over her head and the lower half of her spine gave a series of pops. Straining her back until it started to protest, then curling inward to stretch the other way. Satisfied with the dull, not quite painful ache, she made another attempt to get up, and this time she made it.

Careful not to step on her partner, Danielle made her way over to the water bottles they'd left on the table, and proceeded to down one of them in ten seconds flat. 

Putting the empty bottle off to the side, she grabbed another and moved to lean back against the wall, twisting the top back and fourth between thumb and forefinger. Her eyes lingered on Rachel where she lay on her side, arm wrapped about one of the pillows they'd made their little pile out of. Rachel's ribcage rose and fell in a constant rhythm, a rhythm that felt cathartic to watch. 

Danielle took another drink of water, slower this time, the promise she'd made the night before hanging irritatingly over her head. Rachel told her to eat something if she woke up without her, and she wasn't sure she was up to it.

She was never up to it when she was dealing with a hangover, really. Which sucked, because the nutrients that alcohol took out needed to be replaced if she wanted to feel better. Andrew used to make her eat on those days. He'd scarf down an egg sandwich first to give her some time and then he'd make her one, wouldn't leave her alone until she'd eaten it and drank half a pot of his shitty, watery coffee that was closer to a bed-time cup of tea than it was to something that could have actually woken someone up.

If she didn't eat before Rachel woke up, then she'd probably make her, like he once did. It was this thought that pulled her away from the wall to go digging around in that backpack of hers. With everything Rachel already had to deal with, she didn't need to be worrying about this, too.

Danielle pulled out a can of peaches and moved to sit by the pile where the other still slept. Popping the top off as quietly as possible, she set to first draining the sugary syrup in much the same manor as she'd drained the water. Fluid gone, she methodically stuffed one slice after another into her face, focused on the act of chewing and swallowing. 

When the can was empty, she pushed it off to the side, leaned her head against her fist. At first, she just watched Rachel, but then her eyes glazed over, and she wasn't watching anything. 

It'd been a while, since she'd done that. Gotten drunk. Not so much a secret, just something she'd neglected to mention. Good memories. Not smart memories, and so far from responsible that the light of responsibility would take a hundred years to reach the Earth, but still good ones. She covered her mouth, held in the weakened chuckle. Danielle remembered convincing him the first time, way back when he'd first invited her over and she found out about his mother's cabinet that lacked both secrecy and protective lock.

Holy shit, she was a bad influence on her friends. 

Andrew's mom never caught them, either. Or if she suspected them, she didn't much care. Too busy to be a part of her family's life. Not the best mother out there. Still better than Elise's.

At least Rachel's parents had been nice. At least one of her friends didn't have a screwed upbringing. 

Danielle's mom and dad never found out what she was doing. She didn't think they'd have been too terribly angry with her, but they would have given her a good talking to. For hours. Even now, if they ever found out about it, they would have sat her down and given her the biggest lecture of her life. And Danielle would have listened, taken their advice to heart, and then gone on and done all the shit she was doing to begin with. 

It felt so long ago, all of that. 

She wished they could be there, now. Andrew and Elise. Maybe they'd never have been able to make a lasting group, but they'd still been her best friends. Maybe they would have been able to keep in touch if she'd have put more effort into it. She knew she would have responded if they'd reached out, and she was sure they would have for her, too. She liked to think so. She liked to think that their thoughts came back to her, and that maybe they'd all be thinking about each other at the same moment in time, however far away they were.

It'd be easier on Rachel, if there were other people around. Someone else for them to talk to besides just each other. Rachel found people draining just as much as Danielle found them energizing. Oh, the relationship was important to them both, they'd agreed as much last night. If zombies had to happen, it was good that they wound up facing it together, but everyone needed a break every now and then.

Sometimes it was easy for her to give Rachel that break. Right now was not one of those times. Right now she didn't want to be alone with her thoughts, right now she was trying not to crawl out of her skin, but like hell she was going to wake her friend up. 

There was one thing that was secret, from Rachel and from everyone else. No one knew, and she didn't want anyone to know. Danielle didn't always like herself very much. 

Which was infuriating, because there were so many things about her to like! The underdog, a stubborn and rebellious youth who put her loved ones first. Her friends liked her. Her parents. Rachel. Hell, Rachel liked her so much that she dropped the human group for her sake, and now they couldn't go find a new one to join because they had to keep traveling. 

Danielle liked to think of herself as an optimist. Sunshine, music, the power of friendship, but the thing about friendship was that it served a fundamental purpose. Hanging out was great and all, good times, but it wasn't enough to enjoy someone's company. 

Things were great with Andrew and Elise, and they welcomed her when she'd proven loyal, but time together wasn't all they were. The two of them sated every social instinct that she'd been previously denied, they gave her a reason to fight. In turn she'd stood up for them, ready to take the fall if it came to that. She'd needed human contact and they'd needed a personified flame.

It'd been years, but her needs hadn't changed. It was who she was, she needed other people. The price for that hadn't changed, either. She was supposed to be the strong one, the take-no-shit one, the loud and fun and careless one. Those were her best aspects, the best parts of herself she had to offer. 

What was Rachel getting out of this? What did Rachel need? 

From what she could tell, Rachel needed much the same thing that Danielle did. Not necessarily to the same social extent, but in essence, they both needed someone to be strong for. That was how they'd managed to get as far as they did, what with zombies everywhere. Problem was, they were alone together. As long as they were both okay then that was fine, but they...weren't always going to be together. She knew what she would have done if she'd been alone after her parents died, and fighting the zombies wasn't it. She knew what she'd do if she didn't have Rachel now. And if she was right about why protecting her in particular was so important to Rachel, then what was going to happen when...?

Caught between a fear of crowds and the practical use of humans as a support system. Caught between two separate but equally unwanted outcomes that she couldn't bear to think about for any length of time, driven to inaction because she didn't know what to do. Maybe she should at least try and convince Rachel to go back to a group, but doubtless she was going to argue that it's not just for the sake of the two of them, that they're saving others by way of weeding out the zombies a little at a time as they go. 

And she'd probably agree with her later, but right now she didn't care about what the zombies were doing, all she wanted was for her friends to be okay.

Which choice here was the right one?

Movement, an involuntary refocusing of her vision. First it was just a splash, two iris's looking back at her, a deep dark blue like a fading sky. The shade, that particular shade, set off a chain reaction of associated neurons, each firing off that brilliant royal blue and the accompanying bone deep tremor of warning, like the signature look of a brightly colored flower that was deadly upon contact. For a moment every inch of her skull was blue, and she was being stared down by a creature whose tongue was as sharp as her teeth. 

Without any passage of time, without any visible shift or moment, the figure on the pillow mountain had gone from asleep to sitting, and it was several moments too late that she recognized that her name had been said.

"...Danielle?"

Hand on her arm, blue, blue eyes still glazed with sleep, but it was the doctor. It was her doctor friend. A shudder went down her back as she pulled on a smile. 

"Hi! Sorry, I uh, I'm not awake yet. How do you feel, doc? Hold on, I'll..." Not giving the doctor any time to think, she stood and grabbed her one of the water bottles. Once she gave her that, she went back and got her one of the fruit cans, though she didn't pause to look at which one it was. "Here. You said we needed food and water in the morning, right? I had mine like I promised, it's your turn. How did you sleep?"

"I slept alright. You?" She accepted the fruit, also not looking to see what it was before popping the top and downing the syrup. Looks like this one was pears.

"Slept good. Bit groggy still."

"Hangovers. Hopefully you'll never get so drunk to know what a bad one feels like."

"Hah. Don't worry. I don't think I could handle drinking much more than I did last night. I'd wind up falling asleep before that." 

"You'd be surprised how much you can drink in one sitting if you do it slow enough."

Doctor's name was Rachel. Rachel didn't know she'd drank before. Rachel was responsible. Rachel was nice.

Danielle folded her hands in her lap to hide that they were shaking. "I'll take your word for it."

The conversation fell off, she focused on the movement of Rachel's hand back and fourth between the can and her mouth. If she'd still had the habit of smoking, she would have used it as an excuse to leave the room. Of course, if she'd still had the habit, she was sure Rachel would have put a stop to it on day one way back when they'd first started traveling. For lack of that, she got up and got more water, drinking a full bottle even though her half-full one was still laying abandoned on the floor.

It helped. 

When she felt strong enough, she came back and sat next to Rachel, leaned against her shoulder. "So, should I plan on us going out today, or are we gonna wait until tomorrow?"

"We need to keep moving. But...let's give it an hour. We'll feel better the more we wake up."

"Sounds good."

"Feel up to playing DnD?" Rachel gave a small, encouraging smile. 

One that was returned. Even if it wasn't real DnD because it didn't have dice, their word games were still fun. Rachel based a lot of them off of campaigns her brother once played with her, she'd once said.

The rest of the day eased into something much better than what the morning was. They gathered their things and moved on, making their way down the street, and everything that had been pressing in on her faded into the background. The only sign that anything had happened was that she kept an arm around one of Rachel's own the entire time.

And hey, great news, they still had half a bottle of Jager left.


	20. Spooky

They didn't bother with costumes on Halloween. Not that costumes wouldn't have been fun, but there were other things on their priority list.

Instead, they gathered up bags of old candy. Discolored a bit from age, but still good enough to safely eat. Chocolate was the favorite, but they'd also managed to get an assortment of hard, fruity flavored things. 

They saved these things until the night of Halloween, and when the sun went down, they ate in the dark and told stories. 

Rachel went first.

"Once, there was a hospital, in a neighborhood full of people. They all lived within a ring of forest. The people in the neighborhood had never seen what was outside, past the trees. They didn't much care, that was the way it'd always been, and they'd never questioned things."

"In this neighborhood lived one man, who'd never thought about it himself, until one night he noticed the doctors from the hospital going into the forest. No one ever went there, no one had a reason to. The more he watched them, the more their activities nagged at him. What were they doing? What lay beyond the forest? So he goes up to the doctors one day, and he says, _'Excuse me, but where do you go when you leave? What do you do out there that's so important that you go every night?"_ "

"The doctors tell him, _'we can't tell you, because you're not a doctor.'_ And the man goes home and thinks to himself that he would very much like to know what it is that they do. So the next day he goes back to the hospital and he says to them, _'Okay. I want to know. How to I become a doctor?'_ "

"And as it turns out, he doesn't just have to be a doctor of one field. He has to master them all, and there are so many different fields out there, Danielle. So he goes and he studies. That alone takes years of his time, and after he's got his medical diploma, he has to go and be an intern for at least four years in each field. From the time he started until the time he'd graduated, he'd gone from a young man to an old one, his hair greyed and his pace slowed."

"Finally granted his last doctorate, he says, _'Okay. I've worked my entire life for this. What do you guys do out in the forest?'_ "

"They take him into the forest, and as they walk, the trees start to change color. They grow bright red and pretty like they do in the fall, and then they fade into yellow and brown. Then they littered the forest floor, and then they were covered by snow. Then the snow melted, and new leaves grew to take their place. In the daytime, birds and squirrels went about their lives, and at night the trees gleamed with bat eyes. No matter how long they walked, it seemed to keep going, without end. It seemed impossible that they would be able to make this journey there and back so often. There were storms, rainbows, the howling of wolves, the trickling of a stream. But finally, after what seemed like an eternity, they reached the other side of the forest. He stepped out from between the trees, and he stared in amazement at what he saw before him."

"...but I can't tell you what he saw, Danielle. I'm afraid you're not a doctor."

There was a pause. Danielle's response came with a hushed tone of horror. "Rachel, you monster. How do you expect me to top that??"

Rachel snickered, giving Danielle's hand a brief squeeze. "I didn't know this was a competition."

"How dare. Oh my God. Okay. Give me a minute."

 And now it was Danielle's turn.

"Once there was mouse who lived in a tiny hill just beside the farm. The mouse had been there all her life, and was well aware of how to survive there. So long as she could get enough food for herself and her family, they would be fine. But there was one other danger on the farm besides starvation. That danger was the cat. Now, she'd never met the cat in person, but her parents once told her of the horrors this cat could do. They'd implied more than once that her father had gone against it, but he always went quiet whenever she tried to ask him about it directly."

"This cat overshadowed her life, a nagging thought in the back of her mind whenever she went out."

"She was always careful, always, but her own kids...they never quite understood the danger. Maybe she'd not been able to convey it right when she told them, maybe they were just more reckless as pups than she'd been. They liked to go out without her."

"So of course, she hears them cry for her, and she rushes to their aid. Lo, and it was the cat, it's eyes like mirrors and it's body a massive wall of fur and muscle. It stood above her kids, ready to take them away, but the little mouse jumped between them and told the cat to take her instead. The cat's voice, a cold rumble, like thunder made of ice, it asked her, _'Are you sure?'_ "

"She says yes, and the cat picks her up by her scruff and trots away. Over the fence, then up a tree, all the way up to the roof of the cabin. It puts her down, and she sits there, her thoughts rushing from one horrible thing to the other. Could she escape, like her father once did? Would it let her go? If she lived, what horror would she bear witness to?"

"The cat stands up on a box, up on the roof, and it tells her in it's jagged, frosty voice, that she has to be completely honest with it. Confused, she nods, watching as it curled it's tail around it's legs. It takes a breath, and it begins to sing..."

_"...never gonna give you up...never gonna let you down..."_

Rachel's gasped, sputtering. "Did you just Rick-Roll me???"

"And like her father before her, she couldn't bear to tell her children the secret of the cat when she returned. The meme was just too awful to give words to."

"Danielle, why?"

"Hey, you started it with the doctor story!"

They never did get around to telling an actual scary story, but they had fun anyway.


	21. Rewrite

It was with a heavy heart that Danielle put everything she'd made for her comic in a separate folder to tuck into the very back of her backpack. 

She wasn't about to throw anything out, she'd put a lot of time and effort into it. But the fact of the matter was that one, the style she drew her characters in had changed, and two, there were scenes that she wanted to redo, plot points she wanted to either build upon or change altogether.

This was a part of being an artist. First get the framework down, then start reworking it. 

In this case, she regarded the previous things she'd drawn as a rough draft, and now she was starting the final copy. At least, she intended it to be the final copy. She'd start over again if she needed to.

This time, though, she asked Rachel not to look at it. 

Oh, she'd still show her things now and then, drawings she was particularly proud of, little side-projects here and there, but the main story she kept to herself.

Kept to herself, and kept in a new folder.

She wrote, 'A Holy Mission,' across the front. It was as good a name as any.


	22. Outnumbered

Their main goal was to save people. However they’d started, their priorities were now to help those around them outlast this thing. They still searched for hospitals, but that goal was secondary. It was one of the reasons Rachel still wore her white coat, no matter how tattered and filthy it was. Others would see it and know they could ask for help.

They never stayed with any one group for very long. Depending on the circumstances, they’d accept food or other supplies in return. Sometimes if the people they assisted were too badly off, they wouldn’t accept anything when they left.

It was never more clear than when they were around others the effect this entire ordeal had on Danielle. When alone with Rachel, she was extroverted, easy to talk to, energetic. When they were around others, though, she stuck to her side like glue, sometimes keeping between her and the crowd, sometimes hiding behind. Hardly raising her voice above a murmur, and what she did say was clumsy and stuttered.

Nervous, paranoid. Still, they had to work with others on a semi-regular basis.

In this particular case, they'd happened upon a small crowd made up of what looked like three or four families. A few of them were dealing with the beginnings of a cold, and at their request Rachel offered medicine for it, with instructions to rest in the coming week. They might be able to finish the rest of the day's travel, but they were going to be too exhausted later to keep it up. 

Because they happened to be traveling in the same direction, she agreed to accompany them. They'd find a spot to settle in within the same neighborhood, at least for a while. 

The family's were traveling because their old neighborhood overtaken by a wandering hoard. Easier to leave than it was to try and get rid of them. One of the parents walked by Rachel's side and told her about it, doing little more than idle chattering, and Rachel paid him about as much attention as she needed to.

She had one arm wrapped around Danielle's shoulders, let her half-burrow into her side as she needed to. 

One of the kids wandered up as they were walking. Younger than Danielle, only fourteen. He was trying to engage the other in conversation. Maybe he'd caught her nervousness and was trying to help. Maybe he was just the talkative sort and approached for no other reason than that Danielle was young, and also new. Rachel kept an arm around her charge to promote a sense of safety, but didn't interfere with the conversation. No, they weren't going to be with the group forever, but still...it'd been almost two years, and she wanted to encourage Danielle in making friends with others.

The boy's name was Reagan. In his arms, he carried a long-haired cat named Scourge. Once or twice, he'd offered Scourge up for petting, but Danielle had refused. For lack of much feedback, he started talking about some book series Rachel hadn't heard of. The two of them had something in common, at least, in a love of stories. Danielle was listening, though her comments were few and far between. The boy didn't seem bothered, and soon he was going through the entire series book by book.

Scourge squirmed in irritation every now and then, meowing his protest at being held for so long. Danielle raised her voice slightly, her concern prompting her to be as clear as possible when she said, "Do you have...do you have a cat box? He should probably be in a cat box."

"...you mean a carrier? I know, but we uh, didn't have one when this started. So I'm carrying him."

"Ah..."

Rachel was inclined to agree. But Reagan seemed to be doing a good job so far keeping hold of his cat, and they were all going to be back inside at the end of the day. 

Reagan went back to the book series, and Danielle let him. For a few hours, they kept going, the sun inching across the sky overhead. Now, the practical issue of being a part of a crowd of people, particularly being in the middle of that crowd, is that Rachel couldn't keep as good an eye on their surroundings as she could have otherwise. On the top of that, the group itself was distracted, so when it turned out there were a few zombies in the area, no one realized until the zombies knew they were there.

The tremor of panic rolled though the group, it was only at the last minute that Rachel saw one of the infected mere feet from their traveling companions. Letting go of Danielle, she came to his rescue, taking the zombie out before it could make contact.

Sound attracts, and there were a lot more of them than it looked like at first glance. They came out of the woodwork, an uncountable number. 

In the aftermath of the gunshot, Rachel heard a distant, startled, "Scourge!" from Reagan, and she didn't have to look to guess that he'd lost track of him. Reagan's mother grabbed the boy, keeping him from running after him and toward the hoard.

Rachel didn't have time to worry about that. Right now she was focused on getting distance between the group and their attackers. Calling orders, pushing them back in the other direction, looking for an opening to escape. It was like a bad episode of the Walking Dead. So pretty much it was just a regular episode of the Walking Dead, like some author was using a poor excuse to further their plot.

Retreating the way they'd come. Rachel started to back up, flinching when she heard the yowling of a cat. Instinctively glancing to the side, but instead of the expected sight of the tiny creature being eaten, she saw Danielle. 

Away from the group, her fingers curled tight in Scourge's scruff, dragging him out from between a dumpster and a fence. Rachel called her name, but it was too late, there were zombies between them, too many for either to get past. Unable to return to her, and unable to stay, Danielle tucked Scourge in against her chest and took off.

Rachel, likewise, was forced to run, fleeing back to the group alone. 


	23. Wait

To say she was upset...would have been a severe understatement.

Rachel's teeth clamped together so tightly that her jaw ached, fingers restlessly flexing as she went over each and every member of the group. Searching for wounds, however minor, to treat. No bites, luckily, but scrambling away from a threat with fifteen other people almost always resulted in scrapes. Bruises, strained muscles, cuts. When she had to talk, and of course she had to, she spoke in a calm and deliberate manor. Collected. Professional. Anger was no excuse to stop being a doctor.

Take this for pain. Keep this wrapped about the ankle for at least three days. Hold still while she cleaned and bandaged a limb. Those who were coming down with colds were put on immediate bed-rest, forget that day of traveling. She wasn't going anywhere until she found Danielle, and they needed to recover, anyway.

Stupid girl. Naive. Idealistic. Damn her and damn her savior complex. 

It was Andrew and Elise that taught her that, taught her that she was the one that needed to put herself at risk, taught her to throw herself in front of others. All those stories and not once could Rachel recall one that involved her stepping back and letting something resolve itself. What made it worse was that it was the second time she'd pulled this, a repeat of the water tower, but now Rachel couldn't go after her. Too many zombies. She couldn't do anything until they wandered off. 

Hiding in a house. Locked, curtains drawn, keeping quiet. If she was going to go after her, she needed to wait until she had an opening. 

Reagan skinned his palms and his knees in the chase. Nothing that couldn't be handled. 

Him and his _cat._  

But it wasn't him. Not him, or Scourge, or Danielle. It was the zombies, sure. It was the situation.

And Rachel took the same care of him as she did the others. Carefully, gently cleaning the wounds on his palms first, then wrapping them both up in bandages. Her shoulders were stiff. His fingers were shaking.

Steady breath. She asks, "Are you alright?"

And he's not. She knows he's not. His eyes are red, and he's been crying, and regardless of the snarl she felt clawing up her insides, what's done is done and they had to deal with it.

"Stay strong," she says, her tone flat, but she hopes he'll take her words to heart. "We're going to go looking for them as soon as we can. There's a chance they'll both be okay. Danielle's fast. She can run laps around me without trying. I'm not making promises, but don't lose hope, either."

Hope. So much hope that she risked her life for a cat. Can't let a chance to be a hero slip by. _Fuck._

Reagan's voice breaks, and he's dangerously close to tearing up again. "I...I should've held onto him tighter. I'm sorry..."

"Mistakes happen. The important thing is that we learn from them. If you spend all your time placing blame, even if you place it on yourself, then you're not focused on dealing with the problem. And your grip wasn't the issue. You need a cat carrier if you're going to travel. That's something you can work on after we ensure everyone's safe."

"But what if they're not?"

Rachel's jaw clenched, and she closed her eyes to push back the pressure. Try not to break down in front of the patient. "Then we'll deal with it when the time comes."

She inhaled. Switched to cleaning his knees. He landed really hard on his right one, it was still bleeding. She pressed gauze against it, applying steady pressure.

Swallowing, the sound loud in her ears, she said, "I can't imagine you feel like eating right now, but you should try. Outside of that, you should rest. Even if you don't go to sleep, just having your eyes closed helps. Distract yourself. Read. You're going to be alright."

"...okay."

Bleeding stopped. She started wrapping his knee up. 

Silence between them. Reagan sniffed. Then, in a small voice, he asked, "...are you okay, doctor...?"

"Rachel. We aren't in a hospital, you can call me Rachel. And...I'll be fine. Worry more about yourself."

Finishing up, she paused to put a hand on his shoulder, before moving on to the next person.

When everyone was dealt with, when there was nothing more to clean or bandage, Rachel took her backpack and went into one of the bedrooms, locking the door. In there, she did her best to take her own advice. Eat a can of fruit. Drink some water. Lay down for a while. Pace the room.

Wait. 


	24. Survive

All she knew in that moment was that she had to run.

It was a dizzying rush, a flare of disorientation. Didn't know where she was, didn't know where her partner went. The world around her was sharp, painfully bright and all too real, a sea of snapping teeth against the infinitesimal speck that was her. Arms tight around her chest, holding on to something furry, something that squirmed and scratched, something that she couldn't let go of no matter the cost.

Movement from one place to the other blended into a near nonsensical visual mess, the sound of her own footsteps overtaking the noise from the bad things. 

She was good at running. She was _great_ at running. Dodging, avoiding, ducking under a reaching arm or sidestepping a hungry lunge at the last moment. Aware, alive, and tasked with the responsibility of remaining that way. Her own death meant the death of the thing in her arms, and that wasn't an option. She had to be the strong one.

Always, always, always. 

Tasked to be the rock, tasked to endure, tasked to keep going and going even as muscles started to protest her flight. Being good at running didn't mean she wasn't human, and humans as a species were shit at running compared to most other animals. 

Bad things were shit at running, too. Worse than humans. They could be outrun. It wasn't speed they had, it was numbers. Running through their numbers. 

Tripped. Almost lost the cat. Grabbed the cat. Cat bit her hand. That's fine. 

Keep going. 

Keep going like they keep going, keep going until she's run more than they have numbers to challenge her with. Be better at running than they are at forming hoards.

Her arms hurt. Her hand throbbed. 

Her skin was dripping with sweat and her backpack was heavy.

Block after block, house after house, and after an eternity the bad things finally started to thin out. Still couldn't let go of the thing in her arms. Had to get inside. Not every house was unlocked, and not enough time to break in.

One house, two house, three-

Zombie there she didn't see. She scrambled back, away, put distance, and then fell. Over the side of the porch, down to the ground, down onto something sharp. 

Pain.

The breaking of skin, a stabbing flare. A burn in her throat to tell her that the screeching she heard was her own. Noise was bad, need to move faster. Scrambling back up onto her feet, but her leg buckled under her weight, made her hit the ground again. Rocks against her knees, hand braced against the ground while one arm held steadfast to the cat. A moment to steel herself, back up on her feet, slower now, on to the next house.

Unlocked. Of course. This was the one that would be unlocked. 

She opened the door, closed it behind her, dropped what she held and then it was gone. A streak of fur followed by nothing. Floor was hard, cold, hurtful against her knees. Threw off the backpack, pulled out her gun. The house needed to be searched, secured, safe. Tried to stand, but her leg resisted her movements, and she was bleeding.

Red. Dark red. Blood that was dark red came from deeper cuts. Blood that was dark red was bad. 

Dropped the gun, pulled her pant-leg up. Had to stop the bleeding. Held a hand against the wound, but all that did was stain it. She glanced away, half reaching for the gun. Secure the house.

Noise in the back of her throat. No. Stop the bleeding first. Cloth. Shirt?

She pulled her shirt off and wadded it into a ball, put it against the wound. Keep pressure. 

Dizzy. 

She needed something to press on her leg. In the living room, find the bedroom. Some people wore belts. A belt would be perfect. The rope-like strip of fluff used to keep bathrobes closed. Something she could use to tie a knot. 

Crawling, can't hold shirt against wound while standing. Didn't have her gun. Too late to go back for it. 

Living room, dining room, kitchen. Big sliding door. Hallway. Bathroom. Two bedrooms. 

No bad things. Red eyes, sharp teeth. Bat wings, made of shadow, things that watched in the dark. 

Small bedroom. Kids room? Bigger bedroom, closet, and yes, yes there were belts. Dragged herself up on shaky limbs to grab one, collapsed back onto the floor. Wrap the belt around the shirt and lock it in place tight enough to stop the bleeding.

House was probably safe. No zombies. Sheer dumb luck. Her gun was in the living room. Stupid mistake. Should go back and get it.

Should, but tired. Tired...movement is hard, too hard to stand again.

Felt herself go limp. On the floor, on her back, eyes losing focus. Her arms feel empty when she holds them across her chest. She's supposed to have something with her.

Isn't she?

More than that. Someone important. Rachel. Rachel wasn't there. Rachel was always there. Always, always, why wasn't she there now? 

Focus. What happened? Was Rachel safe? Was she safe, or did they...did the monsters...?

...cat. Right. The cat.

Grabbed the cat, grabbed it and ran. 

Rachel was alive. If Rachel was alive, then she would come for her. It was okay to rest. Rest now, few minutes. Go back and secure the house. Just had to close her eyes.

Rest, secure, then wait. 

Rachel will be back. Survive until then.

Wait and survive. 


	25. Comfort

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for both injury and illness in this chapter

There was a weight on Danielle's chest when she woke up.

A contrast against everything else. Hard surface against her back, but this weight was soft. Chilled air against every inch of skin, but this weight was warm. Everything was still around her, but this weight moved. It vibrated in a continuous rolling tremor, and it breathed.

She lay there for a long time, not always aware of the weight, not always conscious. Sometimes she opened her eyes. Little by little, the room started to dim. Darker, and darker, and by the time she managed to drag herself out of that thoughtless haze it was nearing the end of a sunset. Still bright enough to see, but not for long. 

Swallowed, found her throat was dry. Flexed her fingers. Dull pain up and down her arms, deeper pain at one palm. A quiet noise of strain as she stretches, back stiff, spine cracking. Focused on the weight, and realized it was a cat. Danielle gave a weak chuckle, lips parted like an open wound as she raised her hand to look at the puncture marks. Not a deep bite, but deep enough to identify it. Arms were scratched, too. 

"...hah. You weren't happy with me, were you? Sorry 'bout that."

Her voice feels strange. Maybe it's because she desperately needs a drink of water. Maybe it's because she's still tired.

Using her less-injured hand, she brushed fingertips though the cat's fur. Found a spot that made it lean into her, and scratched it for a little while. The purring didn't stop. Happier than it was earlier, she liked to think. Probably hungry, though. Probably thirsty as she was. 

And it hurts to talk, but the emptiness of the room feels overbearing, and a part of her is afraid she'll go back to sleep if she isn't active. 

"You ever hear the stories people tell...about how cats'll sit on you when you sleep to steal your breath? I don't believe them. People make that shit up 'cause they hate cats and they want everyone else to hate em too. I know what you're really doing."

As she spoke, the cat started kneading against her. The affection was nice, but cats have fur that that humans lack, and unintentional though it was the cat was pressing its claws against the bare skin on her chest. She readjusted it downward a bit, let it knead at her sports bra for lack of a shirt. 

"Cats purr when they're happy, but they also do it to soothe. Staying calm helps with healing. You're trying to help."

Scourge had no idea what she was saying, but hey. 

She gave him a few more scratches, before going on to murmur, "Don't get me wrong, I've never had a cat. And you don't have to be worried about me. I'm okay."

And she was okay, but she needed water, and Scourge needed food. The sun was setting, and if she didn't do it now she wasn't going to be able to do it all night.

Danielle took a breath. Gently moved Scourge off of her, and moved to stand. The moment she bent her leg, pain shot up the limb and sent her back onto the floor with a curse hissed between her teeth. Fuck, that was worse than she was expecting, a great deal worse. She lay still, fingers curled into a fist, breathing through the worst of it. After a few moments, it subsided into a dull, achy throb.

Well, her job just got a lot more difficult, eh?

Scourge wasn't on her chest anymore. He was at her side, rubbing against her, meowing. Long, drawn out. Upset.

"I don't like it much either, buddy," she said. "But it's gotta be done. I gotta do this."

As if in protest, he meowed louder, head pressed against the bare skin of her arm. Ignoring him, she braced herself, and tried once more to stand. Biting out another curse, she fought hard against gravity's pull, forcing her injured leg under her and then making it take her weight. A sharper pain and a vague heat suggested the thing was bleeding again, but she wasn't about to take the shirt off to find out. Gritting her teeth, hands against the door of the closet for balance.

Once she was up, Scourge stopped rubbing against her. He kept a few feet of distance, perhaps aware that he really couldn't touch her without making her trip. She was grateful for that. Still, he kept meowing, eyes on her where he sat.

"Scourge please. I'm fine."

Turns out getting up was the easy part. The hard part was actually walking. For all that she insisted that her leg hold her, the muscle kept trying to buckle, and more than once she almost fell back to the floor. With a slow, painful limp, and using the walls for support, she made her way out of the bedroom and back toward the front of the house. Past the kids room, which she paused to look at on the way. Green, which was nicely gender neutral, but also not a creative color. A crib, a desk, toys. One of those things that hang over the place where a baby sleeps, with little stars and moons hanging off of it. Never did understand the point of those. 

Whoever this room belonged to, they were a toddler now. Old enough to be walking, at least a little. 

By the sliding glass door there hung an empty nail in the wall. A place to hang a dog leash, so suggested the squeaky toy in the corner of the room. Coffee pot in the kitchen, with a container of ground coffee next to it. They'd left in a hurry. Grabbed what they needed to grab, and got out of there. Maybe this was Popcorn's old house.

It wasn't, of course. Popcorn's kid was five or six, not two.

Her backpack lay in the corner of the livingroom, her gun a few feet away. 

Kneeling down was another lesson in pain, and she didn't so much lower herself to the ground as she let herself fall as carefully as possible. A shiver ran the length of her back, a pain in her jaw alerting her to the fact that she was clenching it. Not just from pain, but also from the fact that the room was a touch too chilly.

It was supposed to be summer, the room had no right to be chilly. 

The moment she was down, the cat was up against her side again. Another meow, it got up on its hind legs and wrapped its paws around her upper arm. Between its pleading protests, she could both hear and feel it purring.

Pulling out a bottle of water, she downed half of it in one go. Her next move was to shrug the cat off of her and get a fresh shirt on, pulling her cross out from under it so it could lay out in the open. Hopefully that would help with the cold. Next, she started pulling out every can of food she had. Strictly speaking, she'd need protein to help herself heal... but that wasn't going to happen for a while. Taking a few moments, Danielle separated the canned meat from the fruits and vegetables, left anything bagged in her backpack. 

She had more plant based food than anything else. After considering her supplies, she picked a can of processed chicken and popped the top open, then put it down in front of the cat.

It sniffed the food, briefly. The distraction lasted for about a second before it was back at her side, tail brushing over her back. Another meow. She frowned.

"Kitty, you need to eat, too."

Her words were ignored, and she huffed, reaching for some canned peas. Peas were gross, but she got most of the can down before setting it off to the side. 

No litter box, but there was nothing she could do about that. The only other thing she could think of that a cat might need was water. Her bottle was a perfect container for her, but it wouldn't be enough for her little partner. Now, most kitchens would have bowls, and judging by how quickly the family seemed to have left the place, she doubted they'd have brought any with them. This meant that she'd have to get up again, of course. 

Groaning, she set herself to that, much to the cat's displeasure. She murmured her response. "I know, I know. Sorry."

Found the bowls in the upper cupboards. Filled one with tap water. Remembered her bottle and thought that she really should have taken it with her for a refill. It wasn't her only bottle, but it'd have saved her a trip later.

Oh well. It was getting darker. Maybe a few minutes of light left. She had to get settled before that.

Carrying the bowl without spilling was impossible, but she managed to save enough of the water for the moment. Collapsing back to the floor, she put the bowl next to the food, panting with both effort and pain. Sweaty. That wasn't going to help with the chill.

"You really should eat, kitty. Or drink something. It's important."

But the cat really only had eyes for her. Paws on her shoulder, face pressed into her lower jaw, it leaned against her with its entire weight. It was cute. She scratched its ear.

"...Okay. You win. But if you don't eat something tomorrow I'm gonna be concerned."

She finished her bottle of water, and then lay down, shifting until she found the most comfortable position possible. The cat hopped back up on her chest, purring, kneading again. With her shirt on, it was a much more pleasant experience. 

A sigh, and the exhaustion pressed in like the darkness all around her. Almost a solid thing. For a moment, too distant, and then for a moment, too sharp. She hated being in the dark and she hated being stuck with her own thoughts.

But the cat was there. Paws pressing her upper stomach rhythmically, and that purr. She focused on the purr, the feeling of weight and warmth, and it helped. 

Something stared in from outside, a creeping slither of shadows, the soundless click of claws on the roof...but she wasn't alone. 

The cat was here, and for now she felt safe. 


	26. Door

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for both injury and illness in this chapter.

When she opened her eyes, she saw that the sun had risen.

Soft movement against her chest. Fluffy. Breathing. 

The moment Danielle moved, Scourge's eyes opened. He stood, tail tip twitching, but he didn't move from where he sat until she sat up. It took several seconds too long for her to register the noises she was hearing as meows. Uncaring about the pressure against her side or his insistence that she lay back down, she curled in on herself. Her leg hurt worse now, too painful to bend, or else she'd have curled up tighter. More than the pain, though, she was cold. The house was freezing.

Winter already?

Teeth chattering, and thoughtless of Scourge's presence, she pulled herself up and made her way toward the back of the house. All the way back, to crawl under the covers of the bed. Frosty covers, they pressed against her skin and made her feel colder, but she knew if she waited there long enough they'd warm.

Cat followed. Jumped up to rest next to her. Cats were supposed to be independent. Cats don't follow their owners around. This wasn't even her cat.

Wished Rachel was there. Rachel could give her hugs and get her warmer faster.

She'd be there. Eventually. She'd find her. She found her before.

...although...

Inside of a house. How was the doctor going to find her...?

Laying there, it occurred to her that maybe her partner was looking for her, but she just couldn't locate her. That might be why she wasn't there yet. Shit, she should've thought about that before. 

This meant she was going to have to move again. Leaving the house wasn't an option. She wouldn't make it one block.

When she stood, she took the blanket with her. Grabbed the pillow and held in in her teeth. Went back into the living room. Dropped her things on the floor. Should drink more water. Should eat. She did both. Glanced over the chicken on the floor. Cat still hadn't eaten. If it didn't eat soon, she was going to have to throw that away and get something fresh out. Went to the kitchen, refilled the water bowl. Refilled her bottles too. Returned to the living room and remembered that Rachel didn't know where she was only after she'd sat down.

Right. That thing. She needed to do that thing.

Cat was against her back. 

She pulled out her comic supplies from her backpack, pulled out a paper. On that paper, in big letters, she wrote...

She wrote...

Dr. Evans. 

Doctor's name. Dr. Evans.

Doctor wasn't going to see this there though. She had to do something about that. Find tape. Something. Got back up. Wandered the house. Found a nail sticking out of the wall by the sliding glass door, and that would do nicely. 

Problem. She couldn't go outside without the cat running away. 

She put the cat in the bathroom and closed the door. He meowed in protest. It'd only be a few moments.

Danielle grabbed the blanket from the floor and wrapped it around her shoulders, clinging it close to her chest as she limped toward the front door. It felt like she'd been going at this for a long time. Probably had. Her leg was in agony. Everything was sore. Her palm hurt. Whatever happened to her, it hadn't been nice. 

Zombies. Zombies happened.

Out on the porch. 

Turned around, set to pushing the nail through the paper and into the outside of the door. Used the palm of her uninjured hand. The door was tough, but she was stronger, and she kept at it until it was good and pushed in. 

Looked out at the neighborhood. She still didn't have the gun with her. That was probably bad, there were still monsters out. She could see them, lumbering, not too many now, but enough. One of them noticed she was there. She watched it make its way for her, slowly. Should do something about that. 

Danielle leaned back against the door. There was a story they told her, about how a guy had to fight someone bad. Tiny guy. Not at all strong, but he was supposed to fight this giant. It was an unwinnable fight, but the little guy, David, he prayed really really hard, and then he threw a rock, and then the rock killed the giant. The people who told her that story used it to motivate themselves and others to stand up to their obstacles. If God helped him take down a giant then He can help anyone overcome anything. 

Bad thing was closer now. It didn't really have red eyes, or wings, or the sharpened edge of a dragon's muzzle.

Oh, but there was another story about David. People didn't dwell on it much. It wasn't so nice of a story.

David did something bad. What was it he did? There was a...wasn't there this bad guy? This...he was one of God's chosen, but he ended up being a tyrant, and people wanted to get rid of him but they were afraid of killing him. Started with S...or, no. No. Because the thing that happened with David, there was a song about it, from the kid's movie with the ogre. There was a lady that David liked, and he like, cheated or something for her. Murdered for her...?

And his punishment for this was to lose his kid. 

The story focused on David and his faith, but the thing that always upset Danielle was that the kid wound up being punished for something they didn't do. Everyone always focused on David's reaction, but rarely did they go, 'oh, right. Poor kid.'

Demon was at the porch now. She really needs to move. Sluggish, but she finds the handle, and goes back through the door. Closes it behind her. Hand on her cross, thumb digging into one of the arms as she makes her way back to the bathroom. Lets the cat out. 

She's so tired. 

Back to the living room, back on the floor. She wraps the blanket around her tightly and rests her head on the pillow. Laying on her side. Cat presses into her back. He was meowing, but quieted once she settled.

The sun was still up the next time she opened her eyes. Significantly lower, but still daylight. 

She drank water and she checked the can of chicken.

Half of it was gone. Good. Good thing. 

Cat pressed into her side. Meow. Meow. Meow.

"...what do you want?" 

Stupid question. She knew what it wanted. 

Better question. "Why do you care?"

Her hands are shaking, and her injured one burns, but she picks the cat up and sets it in her lap. Listens to its frantic purring and noted that, although she was pretty fucking sure that it didn't like being held, it was tolerating her loose hug. 

"Haven't done anything for you yet but piss you off. Food doesn't count, it's your right. So why do you care?"

Cats fur was matted with blood. Her blood. That had to be irritating.

She pressed her face into its side anyway. Fur was soft against her face, regardless of the filth. 

"...I don't know you. You're not my friend."

The words were more breath than voice. Pressure behind her eyes, and she wants to cry. Something raw and painful dragging its claws over her insides, but she's too tired to weep. Felt the cat pull itself from her arms and readjust to lay down closer to her hip before she went back under.

Darkness, when she awoke. Dead of night. Shivering and sweaty, mouth dry. Blindly reached out for her water to fix that. 

Strange noises. Probably nothing. Demons were made of shadows, but they're still too big to get through window or door. Queen Lydia's pissed that she can't get inside. Bad guys never win. 

The edge of darkness softened, the first rays of sunrise. Just bright enough that she can see the faintest of edges that formed the world around her. Got more water. Opened a can of food and ate, not caring what it was. Canned fruit. Pets the cat in the dark. Went back to sleep. 

Entire day went like that. Save for a trip to the sink for more water, most of what she did was rest. The sun sank, then rose, and sank again. Lost track of time, only knew that she'd been in the house for a while. Eventually she went searching for more blankets. Stole one out of the kid's room. Grabbed a couple from a cabinet she found. Piled them up on the living room floor.

Didn't keep her gun too close by, bad idea to have it within arms reach while sleeping, but it was close enough that she could get to it in a semi reasonable amount of time if she needed to. 

Woke up early morning. There was a cat with her. 

Pretty cat. Long brown fur. Bright yellow eyes.

Her mom had brown hair. She got her blond from her dad, and the light honey brown eyes from her mother. 

She pet him, gave him scritches. Listened to him purr. 

Her voice was quiet, but it sounded so loud.

"...are you my mom?"

There's no answer. Doesn't have to be, really. 

Cat has her mom's brown hair. Cat's also been taking care of her this entire time. That's why he was so concerned about her. She didn't have to do anything, being her mother's daughter was enough.

Strange, though. Her mom was never a cat before. 

"Mommy."

Pulling herself halfway out of that pile of blankets, she curled around him as much as she could without hurting her leg. A brief meow of protest when she moved, but only purring and head rubbing after.

"You've been gone years...you aren't supposed to leave."

Her attempt to edge her tone with accusation feel flat when all she managed to do was whine the words. Before she could think of anything else to say, the brush of fur quieted her, and she was asleep again before she could remember to be upset. 


	27. Lydia

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tw: For imagery of infection and description of fever.
> 
> Also Tw: For referenced bullying and past homophobia.

Those three days were the longest of her life.

Rachel spent them almost at a standstill. Nothing to do, helpless but to pace the house and bite down on her nerves. Time eased her anger toward Reagan and his cat, but what was left behind was an all-consuming dread. Danielle was her responsibility. Danielle was gone. 

Every day she watched the hoard wander about, waiting for them to thin out enough for her to leave. The more she and the family stayed low, the more the zombies lost interest. As soon as she could step outside without being overwhelmed, she was gone, setting off in the direction her partner had run in.

Danielle would have found somewhere safe to wait them out, too. That meant that she must be in one of the houses. At the same time, she would've kept going until she'd reached a break in their numbers, where a locked door wouldn't be a death sentence. There'd been a lot of zombies. With no sure way to know where to find her, Rachel's plan was to estimate how far she'd have had to travel, then start checking places one by one.

Calling her name, not shouting, but calling it. She never got an answer.

Some houses were locked. She skipped those, knew Danielle would have left them unlocked. Zombies could break windows, but they couldn't turn a handle. 

Three blocks, four blocks, five. Five blocks in, and she caught sight of a piece of paper hanging off one of the doors. It had _'Dr. Evans.'_ written on it with a shaky, messy hand. 

Danielle hadn't been able to remember her first name when she'd written it.

The moment Rachel opened the door, she found a cat at her feet. Scourge sat on his haunches, looking up at her, meowing. Something loud, pressing. No effort to dash outside, he turned his back to her and started into the house, stopping to glance over his shoulder. This wasn't an effort to get attention or food, he'd have kept at her legs. He wanted to show her something.

He led her to Danielle.

Curled up on her side, blond hair peaking out from under a bundle of blankets. Scourge quieted. She saw him sit down in a far corner, still in the room but no longer meowing. Rachel knelt at her side, tugged the blanket down enough to see flushed skin. Pressed the back of her hand against her cheek, felt the heat radiating off of her, and heard a whine of protest.  

"Danielle. Danielle, I'm here."

She needed to know what the problem was, what to treat. She needed feedback. 

"Come on, wake up."

Set to tugging the blankets down, peeling them away. Down toward her shoulders, drawing out a whimper. She must've burrowed under every scrap of covering in the house that she could get her hands on. Rachel pressed a hand into the upper part of her chest, and the fever was worse there. Worse, and wet, the shirt soaked from sweating. A shiver trembled against the pads of her fingertips, the clatter of teeth reaching her ears, and dazed honey brown eyes blinked open to meet her own. "What...? What are you...? Get off!"

Dazed confusion turned into a snarl, and before Rachel could comprehend the words, Danielle shoved at her. Pushed her away, pushed and struggled against the blankets. Rachel moved back, up on her feet but giving distance. Her voice calm, low, "What's wrong?"

"What're you even doing here?" Free from her covering now, struggling upright. "How did you find me?"

"You...you left a paper on the door."

"That wasn't for _you._ "

Rachel hesitated, a moment to process. "But it _is_ me. I'm Dr. Evans. Do you remember?"

"I remember Dr. Evans. You could never. _._."

Her partner made it to her feet, staggering back. She hit the wall hard and then leaned against it, used it to support herself. Rachel swept her gaze down the length of her, taking in as much information as she could. Scratches up and down both arms, and they were infected. Right arm tucked in close to her chest, the posture defensive, telling her that it was the one that hurt more. Left leg bent at the knee, not even trying to put weight on it. Cloth wrapped around the calf, looked like a shirt, held in place with a belt. 

Every muscle in her stiffened at the sight. The thing was saturated with a good deal of dried blood. "You're hurt."

The bite in Danielle's voice hadn't changed. If anything, it was sharper. "No shit. I hadn't noticed." Her less-injured hand raised to press against her forehead, eyes closed, fingers rubbing. 

Hostility. Rachel kept her tone even, hands out in the open where they could be seen. "I'm here to help."

"You came out of the goodness of your heart. Right. Why are you here really?" Danielle half-slouched against the wall, her hand lowering to rest limp at her side. The other remained tucked into her chest. "You'll have a group. The demons would've torn you apart on day one if you didn't. Why are you here, but not them? Why did you sneak off?"

Danielle held her gaze for a long moment, giving her a searching glare that almost felt solid. Then she looked away, glancing toward the floor, the shift so sudden that Rachel looked down, too. Down to the gun, armed but placed a considerable distance away from where Danielle had been sleeping, like she'd been taught. 

"...are you here to kill me?" Danielle asked.

Rachel looked up, stepping back, increasing the distance between them. "No," she said, "Please. I just want to help."

"I'm not an idiot, Lyds. There's a reason why you're here, and it's not to get little ol' me out of a scrape."

She took another step back. Crap, she needed to treat those wounds, and she needed to treat them now. "I'm not-"

Despite her protest, Danielle went on, weakly rolling a shoulder and taking on a venomously casual tone. "Of course, murder is one of the worst sins, isn't it? Even if you don't think so...enough people do. Your group wouldn't like you anymore. Kill me, and you'll lose their protection. Hah. No skin off my nose. Bring in on. Dare you."

Rachel swallowed. "Ah...no."

"Come to laugh at me then?"

"No. You're hurt. I want to help. Let me help, Danielle."

"Liar. Time's not made you any better, has it? At least you were honest before. You're even using...even using my name."

For the span of a heartbeat, she couldn't think of a good way to respond that wouldn't just be a repetition of her intentions. "I was wrong before. I said things I shouldn't've, and I did even worse. I hurt the people around me, I hurt you. I'm sorry. I want to make up for it."

A snort in response, Danielle's eyes narrowing, focusing into a glare. "No."

"But-"

"No. You don't get to make up for it. You don't get to be sorry. You put us through hell, you put _my friends_ through hell. You...you arrogant, judgmental _ass._ "

"Okay."

"Y-you think you can just, just walk in here, you think-" Danielle tried to take a step forward. Tried, and failed, her injured leg caving under her. She hit the ground on her knees, and the noise she made was shrill, cracked and awful. "-you think...you can make up for everything, and you can't."

"Okay." Rachel, despite herself, came forward. Not wanting to tower over the other, she knelt down in front of her, keeping level. It was all she could do not to actually touch, fingers curling into her palms where she rest them in front of her on the ground. "I understand."

"I don't care...who you think'll forgive you. I don't. I don't forgive you."

"You have every right not to."

"I can deal with this on my own. You're not coming anywhere near me."

"Danielle." 

"Homophobic dickhead. Go play with the demons, they suit you better."

Damn, Lydia.

This wasn't working. Repentance was too out of character, then, and even if it wasn't, the girl had been too far on Danielle's bad side to make a difference. 

...she'd said demons. Not zombies. 

New tactic. 

She'd never met Lydia, only knew about her general character through stories. Trying to mimic the manner and inflection Danielle often spoke with for lack of anything else to base it off of, she said, "fine, be that way. But I'm not leaving until I fix you. So you can either sit there and be stubborn while I keep bugging you about it, or you can let me do what I came here to do."

"Oh, fuck off."

"I'd love to. But, see, there's a reason I'm here Danny. I don't actually have a group. They ran off on me within the first week. You're probably the reason I'm still here, and I'm not letting my only lifeline die on me."

Danielle looked up, that rage that focused her earlier faded just enough so that her eyes looked fogged, glassy. "...what?"

"I met an angel."

She clicked her tongue, huffing. "Angel's aren't real."

"Right. No, she was definitely an angel. Big feathery wings, holy light, all those things they're supposed to be. She was a very pissed off angel, to boot. Fucking cornered me once I was alone. Told me I was part of the problem, breeding malice. Said that sin came from hating others for existing. She even said she was gay, so apparently I screwed up in almost every way it was possible _to_ screw up."

"...you met Rachel?"

"Yeah, I met Rach. She's been keeping an eye on me. She came a few days back and told me she couldn't get to you, but that she'd send me instead. Earth's been getting to her, so she had to go up to heaven to recharge. She showed me how to help you."

"Hah. Oh..." Danielle laughed, the sound quite without humor. "You're just here to save your own ass." 

"Pretty much. Can you blame me?"

"If I don't let you do as she says...she's going to smite the shit out of you."

"...I imagine so."

A pause, and the stiffness was beginning to knot up the muscles in her back to the point of pain. Rachel watched as Danielle looked away, focused on the floor. She started to open her mouth, only for Danielle to reach out and grab her by the forearm.

Her hold was firm, hard enough to strain. Glazed eyes forcing themselves to focus and stare into her own. Rachel let her, distantly remembering bruising her by accident back when this started, and wondering if the reverse was happening. Though small, Danielle was strong, coiled muscle hiding within her frame. 

Danielle bared her teeth in what could only mockingly be called a smile. "I don't have to let you help me."

She was prepared. "No. You don't. Drag me down with you, if that's what you want. But I don't think your angel will be too pleased when she comes to find you and you're dead. I don't mean just angry, either. Sure, she'll take it out on me, but once I'm gone, she'll still have lost you, and that's not something she can come back from. Do you hate me more than you care about her?"

Rachel held very, very still and let the words hang in the air. Danielle's expression grew blank as she held her gaze. With a sigh, she let go, turning her head to the side. "Okay. Do it, then."

She didn't have to be told twice. Pulling herself up, she went for her bag, dragging out everything she was going to need. Painkillers, definitely. Several rolls of gauze, disinfectant, ect...

"I need you to lay down." Biting back the word ' _please,_ ' Rachel knelt again next to her, taking a moment to brace herself while Danielle half collapsed, half lowered herself to her side. She curled every limb into her chest but her left leg. Rachel was glad for the easy access, her arms could wait, the leg needed to come first.

It was just as she'd suspected, upon unhooking the belt and removing the cloth. A set of three gashes, deep and ragged, torn through the flesh like a great claw. They weren't a straight line up and down, but rather they curved diagonally around the back of her calf, starting from just below the underside of the knee and reaching halfway down toward her ankle. The one in the middle was the worst of it, the two on either side were more shallow. It looked like she'd run against the wrong end of a pitchfork during their time apart, and indeed, the resulting wounds were...badly infected.

Infected, but treatable. She could fix this. 

First, she numbed the entire area with local painkillers, and set to work. It was going to take a while, and it was going to take longer still for Danielle to be able to walk again. There were going to be scars. 

"What happened?" she asked. "Did you run across a lion?"

"...fell."

"You fell?"

"Mmm. I was trying to save a cat."

Rachel glanced to the side, briefly regarding the ball of fluff watching them. Alive, because of Danielle. He wouldn't have survived the hoard on his own. She wanted to think of it as bravery, she wanted to linger on the good of it...but that was hard, when actively looking at the wounds her patient sustained and the possibility of something worse having happened. "That's not an excuse. I know you were trying to be nice, but you risked your life."

"I helped someone." Danielle snorted. "I was wondering when you were going to start blaming me. I'm-I'm waiting for you to say it, you know."

"Say what?"

"Rachel isn't here."

"You want me to say that Rachel isn't here?"

"No. Idiot. Don't pretend...you don't know. You want to tell me they're my fault. The things out there, for the shit I did in school."

Rachel swallowed, resisting the urge to look up, needing to be focused on what she was doing. "I wasn't going to say that."

"You're wrong, though. It's not for what I did. It's for everything I thought. Elise and...and Andrew, I don't think they ever understood. Never realized. I tried to tell Andrew. He said he forgave me. He didn't understand."

"It doesn't matter right now. That was a long time ago." 

It felt strange, that she should keep talking about all these intimate things even when it was Lydia who was on the receiving end. Rachel knew from the moment they met that the girl was extroverted, and had come to expect a constant flood of information from her. They'd spent a long time with just each other for company, and as her only social outlet, she'd thought a lot of that chatter was from a basic need for interaction combined with having just one person around who she trusted. 

She still thought she was extroverted, but...maybe there was more to it than that.

Maybe, Rachel thought, a part of the constant story-telling came from nervousness. Maybe she was more prone to talking when she was scared. 

Danielle went on. "Sam never found out...but I knew. I never forgot. Remember sin? And malice? She wanted to be our friend. And she was! She was our friend, but...when I first saw her, I was angry. She was nice, and I shouldn't have hated her like I did, she didn't do anything bad. She was a good person." Danielle's breath caught. "I always hated that I...did that. It made me like you. I was like you, and I don't want to be you."

"You're not me."

"I judged her, for what she was."

"You feel bad about it. And, because you're you, I assume you learned from it better than I did. You're not like me."

Rachel had no idea who Sam even was. She knew Andrew and Elise were her best friends in high-school. She knew Lydia as her enemy, she knew Roxie was her dorm-mate in college...but she'd never heard of a Sam. Sill, her words seemed to calm the other a little. 

For a moment, there was thoughtful silence. Danielle was the one to break it. "Do you know...what the pentagram was for? Besides just pissing you off?"

A very big part of Rachel would have preferred that she quieted and let herself rest. Danielle was injured and exhausted, and more than anything right at that moment, she needed to conserve her energy. At the same time, she wanted her to keep talking. All that fear built up over several days, hearing her voice now reassured her that Danielle was still alive. That was the more selfish reason. She told herself that the other would be calmer if she kept talking, and so she let her continue.

"Because it wasn't just for that. It was for Elise. I...I hadn't known her long. But I heard the two of you, and I knew the rumors were going to be going all over the place. And her parents...they couldn't know. They couldn't know ever know. So I did the one thing I knew would take everyone's attention off her. It was supposed to stop at that. I knew everyone was upset, and I didn't-I didn't want everyone...to be upset. I told them who it was the first chance I had. Andrew, he wanted to turn me in, but Elise...Elise thought it was amazing. She was the one that convinced him...but I don't think it ever went away. I think I always made him nervous, no matter how close we got. Heh..."

Danielle paused, taking a moment to think.

"It was because of her I got the necklaces. I was always quiet before that, but then I wasn't. I was loud. I changed my clothes, and didn't care what everyone said. I got the necklaces because I could. Because I wasn't going to roll over anymore, not for you, not for people like you. Elise wanted one. Andrew went along with it because of her. It wasn't until later, that we...we...

"...people saw us, Lyds. They didn't know why we were doing what we were doing, they just knew that one week Elise came out, and the next week, we were wearing pentagrams. They made assumptions. Sam was the first, she came and she asked if the rumors were true, that we'd started a Pride group, and if she could join. Elise wanted to roll with it, and it was for her, so it was her decision. The next thing I know, I'm buying a whole bunch of the things, and we're handing them out to everyone who asked for one.

"All these Catholics, wearing pentagrams. It was the last thing I thought I'd ever see.

"But it wasn't satanic. It was never...hah, it was never satanic in the first place, and then you all took it and said it was, it...the pentagram originally meant protection, or something like that. But, but anyway, what we were doing, it was for Pride, we weren't being bad. 

"And suddenly, there were all these people that wanted to hang around us. I had Andrew, and Elise, and we started this thing together, and we shared it with them, and it was...it was the first time that..."

She trailed off. 

Rachel, despite herself, glanced up. Something changed in the air, and the look in Danielle's eyes was distant, far away. Moreso than it'd been since she walked through the door. Despite being able to feel her pulse, a cold shiver went through her, and with a prickle of unease, Rachel pressed, "Danny...?"

Relief there, when Danielle looked down at her. Rachel tore her gaze away. Halfway done. Just a while longer. 

Danielle shifted a bit, exhaled quietly. "You couldn't understand, Lyds. You think I didn't try. You think it was all me, but I was just a kid.

"When you're a kid, and all the kids around you, they go to church, but you don't...they notice. When the church tells them that they're part of this special group no one else is in...when they're told that they're forgiven for sins they're not possibly old enough to understand, when they're told that they're loved by someone more important than they could ever imagine because they go, they notice that you're never there.

"They notice, and they repeat the things they're told.

"And you think, maybe, if you started going, too, maybe you could be friends, and maybe they'd stop being mean. But your parents...they don't take you, because they think you should wait and make up your mind when you're older. Because they're afraid you'll be brainwashed. Because then they'd have to go, too, and they're too tired from work, and their job is important. So important, so important that they moved to a place where everyone is catholic, so _important_ that they stayed there for twenty years instead of five. 

"I did try, Lyds. I tried for so long...but I was never good enough for anyone but the two of them. 

"And I'm not saying they should've taken me, God, the last thing I'd want is to be like you, but I was alone...and then I wasn't. I had friends. They thought I was cool. And that...that was...good. And there's nothing you or anyone else could do to make me stop going through Hell for them."

Here, Rachel started wrapping the leg. The bandages would need regular changing, but she'd done what she could for the moment. Starting from the top of the wound, she circled the fabric and brought it downward, getting the entire thing covered. 

"I should've told them that," Danielle said. Her voice was quieter, heavy and tired. "I don't think they knew."

The worst of it dealt with, Rachel gathered her supplies and moved up toward the other's torso, "I need to see your hand now."

"...sure."

Danielle offered the one that hurt less, and Rachel insisted on getting to the opposite one first, if only to get those painkillers into it. The sooner she wasn't hurting, the better. 

As soon as every wound was tended to, Rachel got her up on the couch, and covered her with that pile of blankets at the center of the room. By then Danielle was completely spent, and it didn't take much at all to get her to nod off to sleep.

She cleaned up the room after. Threw the gloves in the trash, washed her hands. 

Came back to sit by the couch and pressed both hands to her face, fingers rubbing at her temples. Her shoulders ached, the pain creeping up into her head and down the length of her spine. She tried not to be angry on Danielle's behalf, tried not to feel for her as much as she did, but stress, lack of sleep, and the state her friend was in made that impossible. Right now, she had special words for every single person who'd ever so much as looked at the girl wrong.

It'd already been a long couple of days. The next few would be just the same.


	28. Fever

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tw: For continued fever and hallucinations from the previous chapter.

Rachel spent much of the day reading. The couch her partner rested on was right next to a window, which provided a convenient source of light. Danielle's temperature was still high, and she still buried herself under a mountain of blankets. 

The cat was well taken care of. She'd put out food and water, both. Nothing she could do about the lack of a litterbox, but they weren't going to stay in the house forever.

Her gun, and Danielle's, had been disarmed and stuck in a bookcase far away and out of sight. This was done in part for physical safety, and in part for Danielle's emotional health. Her father had hated them, and considering all the guilt she'd confessed to the day previous, Rachel wasn't about to give her any reason to dwell on the skills she'd had to learn to survive. 

A soft shifting on the couch behind her. She stuck a piece of paper into the folds of her book to keep her page for her, and put it down. It'd been a few hours. Probably a good time to change bandages. She pulled the blankets off of her leg to do this, and when she was halfway through, Danielle tried to pull her leg back. She'd barely bent the knee an inch when she groaned and stiffened.

"Ugh, Doc, shit. I thought we were dealing with my head..."

"There was an accident, Miss Carter. You fell."

"Fell and cracked my skull, not my leg. Fuck, that hurts."

Rachel was already moving to reapply the painkillers. "There was...another accident. You'll feel better soon."

"You haven't told my parents yet, have you? I should-I need to be the one to tell them. Mom's gonna be pissed, hah...I'm supposed to be running track later."

With the leg dealt with, Rachel covered her back up and moved to change the bandages on her arms, too. Danielle watched her, eyes blurred, but as the air touched her heated skin, she shivered.

"Is it always so cold in here doc? Ya'll need to turn the heater on."

"Power's out. Cable must've snapped down the line, somewhere."

"That's unfortunate. Do you have more blankets? Roxie hates the cold."

Rachel swallowed. "We'll look in the back for her, Miss Carter."

"You know, you don't have to call me that. It makes me feel old. I'll have to start calling you old lady to compensate." Danielle snickered, laughing in the way that one does to try and stress that something was meant as a joke. "Nah. I already have an old lady friend. I'd have to find something else to call you."

Grabbing another roll of bandages for that palm, Rachel said, "I thought you hated nicknames?"

"It's not a nickname, it's a pet name. There's a difference between calling my boyfriend 'Boo' and calling him, 'Drew.' I only nickname the people I don't like. Or the people who ask for it. Roxie asked for it, she doesn't like Roxanne. It wasn't her fault, you know."

Rachel nodded. Danielle already told her the story a long time ago. "No. No one blames her. You don't have to worry about that."

Danielle still felt the need to defend her. "And it's not like she was the only one. We were playing. It got out of hand. That table shouldn't have been in the way to begin with. School should've moved it a long time ago."

"I know."

"She's not in trouble, right? She's been working hard for her degree."

"She's not in trouble, Danielle. They're not going to stand in the way of her schooling."

"Good. She's a good girl. She didn't do anything wrong." Lifting a freshly bandaged hand, she reached up to touch the back of her head, flinching on contact. She must've been feeling the scar. "That thing really got me, eh? Oh...my hair's still short. That's weird."

"It'll take a while to get used to. I cut my hair down to my shoulders once. I couldn't stop touching it for a week."

"Yeah." She clicked her tongue, and lowered her hand to touch her cross. With a raised eyebrow, she lifted it, eyeing the gold-plated pendant. "Where'd this come from?"

Rachel took a breath. Forced a casual air. "Don't know. You were wearing it when you came in."

"Huh." For a brief moment, Danielle fumbled with the clasp, but when she couldn't unhook it she gave a disinterested shrug and stuffed the thing down the front of her shirt. "I'll deal with it later. God, it's cold."

As soon as Rachel was finished, Danielle pulled the blankets back up over her head, peering out at her while she went to throw the old bandages away. For a long moment, Danielle was quiet after she'd returned to sit next to the couch. When she did break the silence, her voice was tense, her words cracking.

"...you didn't get hurt looking for me, did you?"

Rachel put a hand under the blanket in search of hers, curled her fingers about her own as firmly as she possibly could without agitating the wounds. "No. I'm fine. I promise." 

"Would you tell me if you weren't?"

"I would."

Danielle pulled herself out from under the blankets, wrapping her arms about Rachel's shoulders. Clinging. Murmured words of, "I missed you," and "You were gone forever." 

As gently as she could, she moved her back onto the couch, wrapping an arm around her instead. The heat under the blankets was uncomfortable, as was the position, but she held it. "I know. It's okay. I'm here now."

"Rachel."

"I'm here, I'm not going anywhere. You need to stay down and rest."

She didn't pull away until she was sure Danielle wasn't going to move. When she did, she didn't so much leave as she just shifted her position. Hovering above, one arm on the couch to support her weight while she used the other to smooth down the other's hair, fingertips brushing her scalp.

Danielle sniffled quietly, upset but too tired to cry. Rachel brushed a hand over one of her eyes and shushed her anyway.

A meow made Rachel start. Scourge sat next to her, silent in his approach until that moment. Without hesitation, he hopped up onto the couch, padding delicately onto the blankets covering Danielle's stomach, his weight settling on her. 

"Kitty..." He meowed again, responding to Danielle's voice. A third, more pressing meow prompted her to reach down and scratch his ear. Tail curling about his side, he lay down, tiny body vibrating with his purr. "I didn't know cats were allowed in, doc. It'll have to leave before mom gets here. She doesn't like animal hair. Sticks to her suit, never comes off."

"I'll keep that in mind. But I don't see why he can't stay until she comes. It might be a while, and he seems happy there."

"Does he?" Danielle put her hand back under the blanket. "I know a little about cats, from what I read. Never played with them much, though. The boy said his name was Scourge. Said it came from a story he read."

"Scourge doesn't sound like a friendly name for a cat. Maybe it's a misnomer."

"Maybe. I don't remember what he said about the book." A smile. "It'd definitely be the kind of cat that gets one of those edgy red studded collars, though. Maybe he fights crime. Like Batman. He is the scourge of all bad guys. He sends the evil-doers to evil kitty jail."

"His arch-nemesis is this flashy, candy colored tom that just wants to watch the catnip burn."

"Yeah." Danielle closed her eyes, they both listened to the cat in the silence. With a small click of her teeth, she opened her eyes, foggy and staring. She said, "I think you- I think we should...maybe stay with them. The people. You need someone."

Rachel held back a flinch. "We should talk about this later. Now isn't the time."

"You need someone with you. There's a dragon here, you can't be alone."

"I won't be."

"You will, if I'm the only only one around."

Rachel put a hand on her shoulder. Danielle reached up to hold it, keeping them both covered in the blanket.

Danielle pressed. "I need...I need you to live. I need you to be alive. I need you to keep going."

"I will." She looked away, watched the cat and his flexing tail. She'd no intention of what the other was trying to imply, but...it was understandable that it might be on Danielle's mind. "I swear, I will."

"You need to promise."

"I promise. I'll keep going."

Danielle sighed, head rolling to one side. "Can you...can you stay in here? Miss...uh. It's too quiet. You have a book. Can you read your book?"

No. It was the wolf book Danielle told her she hated. But that was okay, she could make it a happy story, if she tried. It was the sound of her voice, and not the words. She spoke aloud, improvising as she went, Danielle's hand holding onto her own. In time, the younger fell asleep, and only then did Rachel stop.

The rest of the day passed in a similar way. Danielle faded in and out, sometimes recognizing her, sometimes not. Always calmed in a similar way, though not always asking for a book read.

After the sun went down, when it was dark, Rachel's own weariness started to creep up on her. The cat was still there, purring steadily. 

She fell asleep to the sound of it.


	29. Recovery

In the morning she found an arm wrapped around her, and a blanket tucked up to her shoulder. Danielle was off the couch, and how she’d managed that without hurting herself, Rachel had no idea. She lay next to her, on the floor. Of the entire mountain of covers, only one had made it down there with them. Rachel pressed a hand to the spot just under the back of her neck, and found that Danielle’s skin was back to a normal temperature. 

The fever was gone.

She let out a breath of relief, and wrapped Danielle up in a hug. Careful not to wake her, she lay there for a while, listening to the other's breath, feeling her side rise and fall in rhythm. Danielle was okay. 

As the sun crept its way through the morning, Rachel clung onto that. Held on to that warmth, and life, and movement. She didn't want to think. Not right now.

It must've been a couple of hours before Danielle moved. She'd need another bandage change, and more painkillers. With a groan, she opened her eyes, focusing on Rachel's own. She flinched, visibly, only to half-throw herself around her. Danielle's arms wrapped tightly around Rachel's middle, and Rachel responded by threading her fingers through her hair, scraping gently down the back of her neck.

"You're back." Danielle murmured, "I'm...I'm sorry I ran off. Something happened. Where's the cat...?"

"Scourge is fine. You took good care of him. Please, please don't do that again. I can't do that again."

"I'm sorry. Is-was...was Lydia...?"

"No, she's not here."

"I kept seeing blue. I thought..."

Blue. 

The dragon in Danielle's sketchbook, it had blue eyes. Lydia, too, must have had blue eyes. So did Rachel. It must have been a flashback. The things in Danielle's past caused trauma. Blue was a trigger. Whether or not it was blue eyes or just blue itself wasn't clear, but it gave her an answer.

"Lydia's not here," Rachel said again, "We're safe. It must've been a dream."

Danielle nodded, face pressed against her shoulder. 

For a while, they stayed like that. When she did move, it was out of fear that Danielle was going to go back to sleep before Rachel could get the things done that needed to be done.

First she dealt with the wounds.

Then she moved onto feeding the both of them. Water, and bathroom breaks, and then because the couch wasn't big enough for them both, they went into the bedroom. Rachel helped Danielle walk, taking on the weight that her injured leg couldn't. The wolf book was left, abandoned on the floor, and they curled up on the bed with the blanket draped over their shoulders.

Exhaustion weighed down on her every muscle. Danielle, too, was spent from her efforts.

They were both asleep again within moments.

The next day was spent in a similar manor, as was the next. Danielle improved nicely, activity picking up enough to complain about said wolf book, though she was open to reading it with her, over her shoulder.

Rachel didn't dislike the book. It wasn't her thing, the weather patterns were weird, and a lot of the wolf behavioral stuff was inaccurate, but it was okay. She could see why Danielle didn't like it. It was fairly... _'shoot the shaggy dog'-esq_. All those hero tropes, but no actual change. It was a tragedy. Danielle didn't like tragedy.

Scourge joined Danielle as she slept, off and on. He was a quiet, gentle cat. Attentive. Rachel could see why Reagan was so attached.

When they'd run out of book to read, but weren't ready to move yet, Danielle gradually slipped into her more talkative nature. She'd lay on her back on the bed, fiddling with her cross, and talk about things. A lot of these things were repetitions of stuff she'd already talked about, honestly after two years of constant chatting, maybe she was running out of topics.

During a lull in the conversation, Rachel brought up her brother.

Little Jasper. She was seven when he was born. He was her only sibling.

She'd always been a protective sister. Sometimes, in her late teens, her parents had her watch him while they went places. 

He'd wound up in forensic investigations. He was the guy that came onto the scene after a crime and looked for evidence, the guy who figured out how things went down by looking at what was left behind. Basically, the singer of _'Annie Are You Okay?'_  

His eyes were blue on the outside, and brown near the pupil. It was a form of heterochromia.

He was afraid of thunderstorms until he was twelve. He'd always been a timid kid. Sensitive. He used to cry a lot. 

If there was one person in her life that she'd want to find after all this mess was over, it was him.

And this mess was going to be over.

Rachel hadn't forgotten Danielle's suggestion that they stay with the family, which is why she brought this up now. The oldest zombies were dying off. They'd not last forever. Humans would best them. 

There were still hoards, yes. There were still a lot of hoards, and a lot of zombies, but this wasn't The Walking Dead, and zombies weren't immortal. By thinning them out, they were helping people who otherwise would have been hurt.

If Danielle wanted to stay with the family, then she'd support that, and she'd absolutely stay with her. But she wasn't going to stay with the family...without her.

Danielle shook her head. "I don't want to stay with them, not for me. There's too many...I don't like crowds."

"I know."

Rachel lay on her side, one arm tucked under her head, the other stretched out to hold Danielle's hand. The silence was too heavy, the weight unbearable. 

"That's what my comic's about," Danielle said after a while. "Us, helping people. More or less."

"You haven't talked about your comic in a while."

"I'll show you when it's finished. I wanna do a good job."

"You're good at stories. I'm sure it'll be great."

"Hah. I'm trying..." She rolled over onto her side, too, facing Rachel. She took Rachel's hand in both of hers, absently flexed her knuckles back and fourth. "Tell me more about your brother?"

And for a while, Rachel was the one telling Danielle stories about the past.

 


	30. Reunited

Danielle was careful to hold Scourge securely on the trip back to the family. The sky was too bright, and too rich a shade of blue. There were no demons around. Were there ever demons around?

Well. The pain in her leg suggested the answer was yes. 

While they walked, she checked out some of the houses they went by. Rachel was patient. She helped her look. 

They found it, eventually. A cat carrier, left behind in a closet. A quick investigation, and the cat who looked like her mother, but was really the secret Batman of cats, or a character from a book, or a little boy's best friend, he finally had a safe method of transport that wouldn't see him running face first into a hoard of monsters. Danielle held the carrier, ready to guard it with her life, and followed the doctor down the road. 

The doctor didn't really have wings, and angels didn't really come down to fight the things that haunted the world. Danielle couldn't remember how long they'd been walking for, and sometimes, she had to remind herself that there was a cat in the box she was carrying, but that was okay. 

Her comic was in a folder, in her backpack. It was just a story. But sometimes it felt more than a story, and the cross around her neck felt like it might help her, somehow. She'd believed in the angel, and the angel came.

(Of course Rachel came. Rachel would fight through hell for her. They'd been through this entire thing together.)

There wasn't a dragon, either, but the thing felt real in the dark, a blue-eyed beast that shadowed her everything.

Scourge meowed, and it was hard to focus, her mind wandering while they walked. She heard something growl from far away, stiffening from the sound, and the angel wrapped an arm around her own and drove her a little bit faster. Danielle bit down on a hiss of pain, because making noise was bad, and Rachel murmured an apology. 

Believing in something doesn't change the reality. 

Yet, perception encompassed the entirety of one's own existence. 

There was once a radio show, where the meaning of life was forty two, and a whale fell to the ground alongside a potted plant, and a man who talked about how his memory told him things, but maybe his memory was wrong. How could he know what was real?

No.

The truth of it was that there were zombies. Zombies were there, and she was with her doctor, and they'd left the group to try and continue her treatment. They'd failed to do that, but now they were out there to kill zombies, because of some optimistic principle they'd both managed to latch onto along the way. 

Which wasn't wrong. They were helping people. Danielle even saved a cat.

And maybe Rachel really would survive this. If she didn't, then at least she'd helped other people, first. That was the point. But Danielle couldn't stand the thought. Rachel needed to survive. She needed to find her brother. She needed to be okay. 

Danielle could remember her friends, and she didn't know if they were alive, but she wanted to think so.

There were a lot of things that she wanted to think. Things that were easier to think. 

Perception was reality. Believing in something doesn't change its outcome. Facts were facts. Did it really matter whether she thought the bad guys were demons or zombies, so long that she kept putting the effort in to stopping them? Did it matter whether she believed in angels, whether she gave her cross meaning or not, if she used those things to motivate herself to help?

(Maybe it mattered. It probably did. Of course it mattered.)

(But she's tired, and the images were pressing, and she wanted to feel safe.)

The comic she's drawing, it's about hope. Hope that things would get better again. Hope was important. Hope kept people going. 

And it's easy to stop telling herself that the wings weren't real. Better to ignore the nagging at the back of her head.

Good guys always won. 

That's what made a good story. The hero never dies. The hero fixes things.

She tried to remember some of the prayers they once told her. Danielle wasn't one of the bad guys, and she refused to be one of the bad guys, but Andrew and Elise and Father Ethan weren't bad, so it was okay. She murmured those half-remembered verses, fingers turning her cross back and fourth because the motion itself was calming.

Rachel stopped, and Danielle didn't remember how long they were out there, but she was sure it hadn't been long, because the sun was still up, and the cat was still meowing, so he'd not been meowing long enough to be tired yet.

"I left them here," Rachel was saying. "Come on."

Inside, now, and the adults were rushing Rachel, asking all kinds of questions, relieved gasps of, "You found her!" and worried, "She's not bit, is she?" and Danielle was looking past them. 

There was only one person in the house that was younger than her. In his box, Scourge meowed, the sound taking on a more incessant, demanding note.

"Reagan?" Danielle asks, and she meets the boy in the middle of the room. Her skin is crawling from the chaos going on behind her, she can hear her parents calling for her to run, she can see and feel blood on her skin and the anger rolling through the air from that fight when they left the group. 

She smiles. Unzips the crate, and holds out the boy's cat to him. 

Scourge went into his arms, and the cat didn't like being held, but still he purred and rubbed up against Reagan's face and chin, clinging to his shirt like he'd disappear if he let go.

Bright eyes looked at her, the young teen breaking out into a grin. "You're okay! You're both okay!"

He hugged her, then. She, in turn, hugged him. 

She hugged him, and everything hurt, but it was okay. He was going to live, and his cat was going to live, and that was the most important thing.

People were still yelling, under the lively chatter of the family, and a beast circled the house outside. She pulled away from Reagan to retreat to Rachel's side, an arm wrapping around the angel's own, leaning against her side. If anyone hurt her, if anyone tried, they were going to have to get through her.

(There was no current threat, but this made her feel better.)

Danielle was quiet, and found difficulty in talking to any one of them that tried to ask her a question. Rachel was the one that did the talking, Rachel was the one that knew what to say. Rachel was good at negotiating. Danielle was good at initiating fights. 

Danielle was good at upsetting people, at painting shit on walls and acting as a decoy. She was good at destruction.

Rachel was good at healing.

She didn't say much. Merely stood next to her partner, let the family look at her wounds to prove to them she hadn't been bitten.

And as soon as the excitement started to settle, Rachel was pulling her away from them and into a side room. Locked the door behind them, and then they were alone, the people were gone. 

New bandages, food, water. A change of clothes.

More sleep.

They lay together, in a blessed quiet that was the exact opposite of outside. It wasn't too bright here. It was warm, and soft, and as long as they were there, the bad things didn't exist.

In the morning, Danielle was going to work on her comic. She was going to work on it every day until she healed enough that they could leave.

She asked Rachel if she knew the rest of those prayers, that she'd once known in high-school.

Of course an angel would know them.

(Rachel once took mythology classes. She knew some of them. The ones she didn't, she'd improvise, if given time.)

Danielle closed her eyes, and listened to her friend talk, and let her thoughts drift until she started to nod off.


	31. Evolution

Something in Danielle changed in the days following her return.

Rachel saw it in everything she did, in the way her eyes glazed over, in the increased need for contact. In every repeated request for attention and prayer, and in the way she'd stopped referring back to her high school days when they spoke.

The injured leg healed, and Danielle once more was able to walk. They spent a few more days with Reagan and his family before going their separate ways.

Back out into the sunlight and warmth. Back to insisting that they both wear sunscreen, to prevent burns. They still played verbal games, went on little adventures on their travels. Sometimes Danielle tried her hand at GM-ing, though most of the time it was Rachel, if only because she was better at it.

(And let's face it, she liked seeing the different ways Danielle found to get out of messes.)

They still hunted hoards of zombies. They still thinned the bad guys out.

A return to routine that no longer felt routine.

Danielle was calling them demons more and more. Forgetting what happened to her parents. Referring to Rachel as 'angel.'

Working on her comic almost constantly when they stopped to rest. If not for the setting of the sun, Rachel was sure she would've had to start fighting to get her to stop. 

Restless nights, an unending anxiety that refused to ease. When it was bad, they slept in some mornings.

One night, when it was getting dark and they were in bed, Danielle draped herself over Rachel's shoulder and said, "You know, evolution's kind of a dick."

"...okay?"

"It is. One day, it was just all like, _'you know what? I'm rather partial to this blueprint I made. I'm gonna make all kinds of little critters that'll pass it down for me.'_ And then it did, and now there's a bunch of fleshy data-banks wandering around."

Rachel raised an eyebrow, curled an arm about Danielle's back. "That's...somewhat how evolution works. That doesn't seem so bad. It's why we're here."

"No. We're here because we got good at passing our blueprint. We got good at passing our blueprint because we're full of stamina and so fucking social that we'll try to bond with anything that exists. Sharks are good at hunting and avoiding bigger things that might eat them. Zebra are fast and stripy and impossible to see. The only reason things are like this is because it's what worked the best for our genetic code."

"That's the point, though. Species are constantly changing, adapting to their environments. All the animals alive now are going to keep going as their needs require."

"Yeah. And evolution's going to keep turning them into all these different things. You know why pain and fear happen? It's because the creatures that felt those things way back when tended to avoid the stuff that caused them, so they were the ones that got to pass the blueprint down. You know what else can pass down blueprints from one space to the other? Computers. But you don't see us making computers that have to suffer to send emails."

"If it weren't for evolution, we wouldn't be able to make the computers in the first place."

"Tch. My point still stands."

Rachel shifted the blanket so it covered them more. "There are good things, too, that wouldn't happen if not for evolution. Newborn pups playing in the forest. A family of lions sunbathing. And us, we wouldn't have our stories, or families, or dreams."

"We only have those because they worked out at the time."

"Does being social for a genetic reason make the ones we love any less important to us? Does it break our wonder in the stars, or the fascination in the world? There are a lot of things worth caring about, we don't need the concept of evolution to do it for us. If anything, it should make us care more."

Danielle clicked her tongue, adjusting her arm into a more comfortable position. She took a breath to say something, but then seemed to think better of it. 

Rachel let her think, keeping the silence for several moments before Danielle spoke again.

"There are a lot of things I care about." For almost a minute, Danielle played absently with the knuckles of Rachel's hand, flexing and relaxing them. "I think you're my best friend. I wish we could've gone to school together. Or, well...met in pretty much any other way than what we did."

"Me, too." Then, in as much of a joking manor as she could muster, she said, "Though I might be a bit too much of an old lady. I thought Elise and Andrew were your best friends?"

"They are. I can have as many best friends as I want." There was a smile in her voice. It faded a bit, then, quieted into something somber. "You can have different kinds of friends, too. There's no mold or rule. There are things you understand that they couldn't."

Before Rachel could think to respond, Danielle lightened the tone again with a laugh, nudging her. "Of course, there were things they understood, too. Some of the things we used to do, you'd go all maternal on us and tell us about responsibilities."

"Aw. I don't get to be the cool mom?"

"You're the the one that yells at us to get off our lawn, remember?"

"Oh, right. Well, I'll just sit you all down and teach you how to file your taxes."

"Mom, no! Not math!"

"Yes, math! All of the math, for all three of you!"

"Nuuuuuu."

Things were changing.

All there could be done for it was to adapt.


	32. Cross

Danielle finally let her read the comic.

The weather was cold, now, and Danielle was too tired for travel. She crawled in close and pushed the folder into Rachel's hands, her head leaning on her shoulder. Rachel read the comic out loud, though taking her time to take in each drawing, scanning over the details as she went.

It was a decent sized comic, but it didn't follow the storyline she'd been expecting.

When Danielle referred to the main characters as the heroine and the angel, she'd assumed the narrative would follow the heroine.

Instead, the comic had a heavier focus on the angel. How she came from heaven when she sensed the danger, and how she found and rescued the heroine from the monsters. There was a background on Queen Lydia between chapters, detailing how the shadow dragon came to be. 

There were times they were separated. There were times they had to stop to recover. It was easy to tell which moments of their life were incorporated, though there were also events that she couldn't trace back to anything that really happened. 

At the end of the comic, the heroine was left in a state where she was slowly being overcome by sin. The narrative made an effort to end it on a positive note, a repetition of the hopeful moral Rachel had been hearing and repeating back for ages...the heroine was with the angel, it said, and things were going to be okay.  
  
But Rachel knew the context. She knew what was implied to happen after the last turn of the page.

She knew what Danielle was trying to do. Danielle never killed off the main characters. Rachel was the main character of the story.

Still focused on Rachel's survival, despite every assurance she had to offer.

The tears broke free before she realized they'd started to well. Rachel shuddered, her breath catching, and the shift was enough for Danielle to look up and say her name in concern.

Rachel couldn't remember the last time she'd cried over anything, not since she was a child. She wrapped her arms around Danielle and clung tight to her, the hold protective, curled about her. Anger, frustration, sadness, everything swelled inside her with a bitter declaration of _this isn't_   _fair._

She's tired when it stops. Tired, and numb, with shaky hands. Danielle pulled away from her then, reaching back to grab at the clasp of her necklace, unlatching it to pull it free. Danielle took that necklace, the cross dangling from its center, and looped it around Rachel's neck. Re-clasping it, and leaving it to rest where it lay.

 


	33. Aftermath

Rachel stayed with the body until it was cold.

She didn't bury her. It would've taken too long, and the practice was for the living, anyway. Before she left, she covered Danielle with blankets, as many warm things as she could find littered throughout the house. Someone, somewhere down the line, was likely to find her. They'd find her, not knowing the story, only that it wasn't a zombie that killed her.

From there, Rachel went to other houses. She gathered supplies, she hunted the hoards. 

She did exactly what she'd said she would.

The task was more dangerous, now. It was also quieter. Hollow. Endless.

It hurt to be alone with her own thoughts. 

She kept herself busy in the daylight hours. Couldn't do that at night, so she tried to tire herself out as much as possible so she could sleep.

Months passed like that. Rachel found herself fidgeting with Danielle's cross as time went on, a little habit that seemed to be par for the course when one wore something 'round their neck. She took to talking to herself, to fill the silence. Reciting prayers, not out of belief, but because it reminded her of her partner in all this.

Rachel was still an atheist. 

She didn't dare let herself guess whether Danielle died as one, one way or the other.

Another half a year, and the zombies were scarce. Where once it was easy to find them, now she was lucky to see one every few weeks. They'd been right. It'd taken ages, but they'd been right. Better than the lack of zombies, there was a good number of survivors. Friends, families like Reagan's and Sarah's, and stray humans gathered together bit by bit to form little towns.

There was no way of telling where in the country she was. No way to find anyone else. 

When it got to the point where she thought she'd do more good by acting as a doctor rather than a hunter, Rachel abandoned her search, and moved on to assist one of the newfound towns as best she could.

It was there she learned that the zombie apocalypse was contained within the States. Other countries were assisting, offering supplies, which gave Rachel a better chance to care for her new patients. 

There was relief, in that knowledge. The fact that it was contained meant that most of the world was still intact. 

Still no way to find anyone else, databases were lost, social security and identification cards meant nothing. But she learned that she'd traveled far, far up north, states away from where she'd once started. Where she was mattered little in the scheme of things, but it was a point to note.

They were working on getting the electricity back in places. Working on getting these towns back to the state where they can self-sustain. 

Rachel focused on work. Keeping busy. The distraction eased the silence, and better still, she was helping people again. Making things better. Doing what she couldn't do for two and a half years.

Her traveling wasn't over yet, but now it was in a car with other volunteers, and she went from town to town. It was in one place in particular, with more people than she could've hopped for, that her little brother came back to her. She never found out what happened to their parents, but Jasper was safe.

When things calmed down enough, they found a nice place to settle where they could keep close together. Next door neighbors, and she saw Jasper and his boyfriend almost every day, if only to check in on one another.

And it was ten years later, that she'd presented Jasper with her completed book. He'd read it in silence, as she, too, scanned over the words she'd written. The comic was there, printed onto the back of each copy. 

The cross was still there, around her neck. It was on a new chain, but the pendent was the same. 

"She wanted people to read her comic," she told him, when he was done reading. "She wanted people to hope. Hope for the future after tragedy. I wrote the book for her."

Her eyes burn. But she doesn't cry.

The book held in her hands.

It's named Carry On for a reason.


	34. Carry On

Somewhere in the west, there was a little town. 

The little town was growing bigger all the time. Once upon a time, the people huddled together in fear, regrouping after the chaos that came. Now, it was where they lived. A sanctuary turned home. 

In this town there lived a priest named Ethan, who did his best to promote kindness and peace. While not exactly strong enough to offer guaranteed safety, he'd offered a calm voice and a plan of action, and he'd been grateful to help as much as he could. This town gave him a sense of pride, though he hated what'd had to happen for it to form.

The people in this town prioritized acceptance. Some of them were Catholic, some of them came from other religious backgrounds. Some were atheist. A good number of them were from the LGBTQ community. 

All of them were safe. 

In this town, lived two people in particular. One of them was a man named Andrew, who lived with his boyfriend of two years and who attended church almost every week. The other was a woman named Elise, who wasn't looking for a relationship at the moment, and who'd lost her belief a long time ago.

The two of them were best friends, and had been best friends since they were in kindergarten. 

Things were okay, all things considered. 

One day, Andrew brought home a book that'd been circling around the place. It was one of the first new things written since the zombies came, and everyone was talking about it. The true story of a doctor's experiences through this mess. 

Andrew hadn't known he'd find a name he recognized until he'd already sat down to read it. He'd almost not believed it was the same Danielle, not until the doctor started recounting stories the girl had told her, things that he'd lived through personally.

He got a second copy of the book, and brought it to Elise. 

In silence, they read it together. 


End file.
